


Tumble, Turn, Overflow

by scarecrow_horses



Series: Ficathons and Challenges [17]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrow_horses/pseuds/scarecrow_horses
Summary: Shanshu was the prophecy to give life back to a champion.  But what if that 'champion' doesn't want it?
Relationships: Xander Harris/Spike
Series: Ficathons and Challenges [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072577
Comments: 10
Kudos: 29





	Tumble, Turn, Overflow

**Author's Note:**

> This is a lot darker than I remember, and so please - hop to the end for warnings.
> 
> Originally written for the [Lynnevitational](https://lynnevitational.livejournal.com/), and posted in nine parts, from May - June, 2006.  
> Beta by Darkhavens, cheering on by Reremouse.  
> Minor format editing.
> 
> The title is from [Burn On](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/randynewman/burnon.html) by Randy Newman.

.

.

The thing Xander hated pretty much more than anything else was jail. All of 'em. They all had that same musty smell, overlaid with sweat and sick and cheap, lye-based disinfectant. And they were mostly loud and crowded and old, except when they were new and then they just reminded him of the Initiative and that kind of gave him the creeps.

Xander sat in his rental car outside of the Escambia County Detention Center. It was big and white and ugly. It seemed to waver slightly in the thick Florida air and Xander hesitated for another minute or so in the air conditioning, his fingers idly tapping the little Enterprise key tag. He didn't want to turn the car off. He didn't want to go in.

_Really, really, really don't want to go in. Don't want this job, don't want...fuck. A lot of things._

He'd _been_ in jail. Three times in Africa, twice in Bosnia. Once in Japan and once in Oklahoma, of all places, when the officer and Xander himself had discovered simultaneously that his driver's license was three years out of date. None of those times had been fun. The Bosnian jails still gave him the occasional nightmare.

The Japanese one had been scarily clean.

Xander's watch faintly beeped the hour and Xander sighed and turned off the car - pushed the door open and stepped out into the heat and humidity of the Florida panhandle. Almost immediately he could feel sweat prickling under his arms and along his hairline - under the patch, starting up an instant itch and he cursed softly, dragging his briefcase out of the seat. It had all the necessary paperwork - all the documents and crap that would keep him in this ugly building for _hours_. Sighing heavily, Xander stomped across the parking lot and went inside.

Three hours later he was finally taken to a small, pale-green walled room and told to wait, they were gonna bring him out. Xander nodded and watched the officer walk away - glared at his watch and then out the window where he could see his car, sitting in direct and unrelenting sunlight.

_Gonna be like a fucking oven in there. Like a God damn oven. Giles, you bastard._

There was a distant clang and clatter - a sort of muffled bellowing and then a louder _clank_ as a door opened. And the bellowing became a voice. One Xander recognized immediately.

"Bloody bastards, put me back! I told you, was a - fuckin' mistake! Not goin' anywhere with that soddin' - ponce!"

 _Ah, Spike. It's so comforting to hear a familiar voice. Not._

Xander waited with something eerily close to anticipation for the voice to become a physical thing. He stepped over toward the doorway and watched the officers manhandle some homeless guy up the hall. Bird's nest of filthy hair, and jeans that could probably walk on their own - at least three layers of cast-off shirts, all ragged at the hems and stained around the neck. Stubble, bruises and a nasty-looking set of scratches down one cheek that looked a little infected.

_Yuck. Probably crawling. And where the hell is Spike?_

The homeless guy twisted like an eel and one officer - big and blond and flushed - jerked him around by his scruff. "Look, asshole, you're goin' 'cause we say you're goin'! Don't need your junkie ass stinkin' up the place."

"An' I told you I'm not! I made a bloody mistake! I'm not.... _Harris_?"

Incredulity in that voice, and Xander stared hard down the hall - stared and then blinked and looked at - red-rimmed blue eyes and a scar right there and a long...black...filthy coat. Xander walked forward stiffly, taking in all the details. All the strange, wrong - _incredible_ \- details.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Spike?"

The blue eyes blinked back at him - widened and then narrowed. "What in fuck are _you_ doing here? Where's the bloody paddy?"

The other officer - black and built like a linebacker - gave Spike a not-too-gentle whap on the back of his head. " _I'm_ a paddy, you waste. Shut the fuck up."

"Bloody figures. Micks and n-"

" _Spike_. Jesus." Xander was relieved when Spike shut up, glaring at all three of them. "Where do I sign for him?"

"You sure you wanna?" blond cop asked, and Xander almost said no. Almost. 

_Of course I don't wanna. He looks like he's been to five different hells and back and since when did Spike ever have a five o'clock shadow? Or more like half-past nine. Jesus. And…._

"You stink, Spike."

"Fuck off, wanker. Where is he?"

"In LA, as far as I know. Nobody said. What do you care?" The black cop jerked Spike into motion and they walked the rest of the way up the hall, into the green room again. Xander signed a paper and then they took the handcuffs off Spike and pushed him toward a little table where a ratty backpack was lying. A big, brown paper bag was next to it and Spike snatched it up and started rooting through it.

"Was too fucked up to be thinkin' right, I told 'em to call the bastard. Hey!" Spike glared at the black cop. "Where's my knife!"

The man stared back, clearly baffled. "Are you kidding? It's illegal. We confiscated it."

"It's the only thing that's kept me from getting my sodding throat cut some nights, what in bloody hell am I supposed to do without it?" Spike tore the bag open, jamming things into his pack. Xander couldn't see anything, really - it seemed to mostly be a tangle of dirty clothes and newspaper clippings and a bulging journal-type book that was wrapped around with twine and rubber bands.

"Find a shelter and get into a program, then you won't _need_ it," blonde cop said, and Spike all but growled. 

For a fleeting moment Xander thought they'd be treated to fangs and forehead but.... No. _Learning some restraint,_ Xander thought, and watched Spike shred the bag, shaking it. 

"Where in hell is my fuckin' kit?"

"Oooh, man," black cop was laughing now. "You sure are a piece'a work, English. You _know_ that shit's illegal. Now sign the damn form."

"Half my sodding gear gone and you want me to sign," Spike muttered, but he did. With, Xander noticed, hands that were callused and shaking and mooned with black under the nails. Dirty hands, with scarred knuckles and more scratches and Xander found himself staring at them for longer than he should.

"You can take him now," the blonde cop said and Xander blinked - nodded - reached out and took Spike's coat-sleeve gingerly between two fingers and tugged him toward the door. Spike swayed into him a little, cursing as he tried to untangle the straps of the backpack. He was limping and Xander wondered what in hell he'd done to himself.

"First stop - shower."

"First stop - liquor store," Spike countered. Xander considered.

"Okay, but you stay in the car."

"Long as you pay, Harris, I'll stay wherever you want."

"Okay - I'll go get the car and you can - you can just jump in, right? It's got tinted windows.

Spike gave Xander a look like he was insane. "Or I could walk to the car."

"Uh - just past noon, very sunny day?" Xander dropped his voice to an almost-whisper. "I don't think Giles had a box of dust in mind when he sent me to 'collect' you."

"Jesus bloody Christ," Spike muttered and slammed out the door. Into the sun. "It's that bloody awful Chevy Malibu, isn't it!" Spike yelled, and stumbled off across the parking lot, still wrestling with his backpack. Xander stared after him, his whole body tensed as he waited for what...didn't happen.

_Oh my God. Giles has a **lot** of explaining to do. A lot._

The liquor store was halfway between the jail and the airport. Xander's hotel was halfway between the store and the jumbo jets. 

_Halfway between alcohol and freedom._

Xander mused on that while he walked the aisles, pondering his selection. He usually went for beer, but the thought of sharing space with Spike for another ten hours until his flight left made him study the bottles of rum and whiskey and vodka with a speculative eye.

He finally settled on tequila, tequila and Jack for Spike. A bin of lemons and limes was handily placed by the cash register and Xander picked out a half-dozen, got 'special' salt - for three dollars more than regular salt - and laid his Council platinum card on the scarred counter. This was a business expense. He gathered up his paper-bagged tolerance and pushed through the door. The heat was immediate and smothering, like a damp woolen blanket. Xander squinted against the glare off the windshield and opened his door, leaning into the Arctic-cold blast of air conditioning.

"I hope you still drink Jack, 'cause that's - _Spike_?"

The car was empty.

 _Damnit to hell! Five minutes, that's it! Five damn minutes -_

Xander yanked the keys out of the ignition and looked around. Not a particularly bad neighborhood, but one that had its share of neglected buildings. There was a too-skinny man standing outside of one, shuffling back and forth, unsteady rhythm to the little radio he had in his hand. Xander strode over to him, hoping he looked scary enough to make the guy talk - not so scary that he'd bolt. The eye-patch did wonders.

"Hey -"

"Hey, man, I wasn't doin' nothin' - you got a dollar? If I got one more dollar I can go get a sandwich." The man's teeth were crooked and greenish and Xander averted his eyes. It was always the teeth that got to him. He hated the dentist and seeing teeth like that made him flash to fillings and wisdom teeth and long days of nothing but green Jell-O consumption. 

"Did you see a guy come by here? Long black coat and a backpack?"

"I seen lots of guys," the man said, and Xander sighed and put his hand into his pocket - pulled out four ones and some change. The man stared with bright, fevered eyes.

"Did you see _this_ guy?" Xander asked, pushing the money into a dirt-lined palm.

"Yeah, I seen him." The man busily smoothed and folded and re-folded the money, already twitching away. He jerked his chin toward the building behind him. "He's in there."

"Great. Thanks." Xander looked at the peeling boards and broken windows and 'For Sale or Lease' sign that was half falling off the doors and sighed. Just what he needed. Some rat-infested hole where Spike was...what, exactly? Buying drugs? Killing someone? "Spike, you fucker," Xander muttered, and pushed through the broken doors.

"Look, I just needed to step out for some air," Spike snapped, and Xander stomped a little harder on the gas, glaring at the road. The usual mid-afternoon Florida rain was falling, greasy and smeary on the windshield of the car.

"Oh, knock it off! You weren't getting _air_ in that crappy building. What was in there - another of those vampire whorehouses? And - how in _fuck_ do you get to go out in the sunlight now? Did you find that ring again?"

Spike stared at him, his long fingers twitching, twitching, twitching. Twisting the straps of his backpack, rubbing along the seams of his jeans - plucking at threads and buttons and invisible lint. "Nobody bloody tells you shite, mate, do they?"

"No, they don't, including you," Xander snarled. He hit his brakes and wrenched the wheel over, just making his exit by a hair. 

_Fuck it. I don't care. Just wanna get to my hotel, get drunk - get him the fuck away from me. Rings, spells - I don't fucking care._

In the three years since Angel had taken down the Evil Law Firm, Xander had heard bits and pieces about the final battle. The desperate, all-or-nothing battle that had cost the LA people two of their own. He'd even formed a grudging respect for the two vampires who'd fought so hard for humanity's sake.

Now, he was starting to rethink that respect. Spike was about as heroic as a junk-yard dog and smelled twice as bad and nothing, it seemed, would ever make him nice or even _remotely_ polite and why in hell was he doing this, anyway? He didn't owe Giles a thing. Fuck the Council, and fuck Spike, too.

"Fuck you _too_ , you wanker," Spike snapped, and Xander realized with a start that he'd spoken aloud.

"Jesus! You really haven't changed. You're just as annoying and - annoying as always!"

"Fat lot you know," Spike muttered, and turned his face away. The twitching little movements of his fingers didn't stop and Xander pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and brought the car to a halt with a jerk.

"You have a Council-supplied ticket to London leaving tonight at ten. You can shower here and I'll get you some clean clothes and that's _it_. Then we're done and we can go back to ignoring each other." Xander got out of the car and jogged through the rain to the hotel, using his key-card to let himself in. Then he stood there while Spike apparently had an argument with himself and punched the dash a couple of times.

"Stupid vampire," Xander muttered, watching Spike get out of the car and limp to the hotel door, seemingly oblivious to the rain. He looked like a drowned cat.

The room had been vacuumed and straightened, and there were new towels in the bathroom, and Xander slung his briefcase down on the bed. He took the bottles out of their paper covers and lined them up on the desk next to the glasses. This hotel had _real_ glasses instead of plastic, thank God. He hated drinking out of those dinky plastic cups. He picked up the ice-bucket and waved it at Spike, even though he didn't actually need ice. "Gonna get some ice. Go ahead and shower, okay? _Before_ you sit on anything or touch anything." 

"Fuck you," Spike muttered, but he looked a little unsteady - a little sick. 

"Not my fault you stink," Xander said, and walked out. He spent more time then a normal human would getting the ice, but he was pissed off and _tired_ and just didn't want to deal. If he was lucky, Spike would be in the shower and he could get a couple or three drinks down his throat before he had to talk to him again. 

_Smooth off the rough edges a little. Get Spike drunk and smooth him unconscious. I can tell the airline he's got the flu or something. Looks bad enough…._

A thought that made Xander frown a little, because even on his worst days - when Spike was crazy, or newly chipped, or beaten to a pulp by Glory or the uber-vamp - he'd never really looked _that_ bad. Xander stopped and got a couple cans of Coke out of the machine, too - took his time smoothing the dollar bills.

He walked slowly back to the room and yeah - Spike was in the shower, thank God. Xander sat down and opened a bottle of tequila - dug his knife out of its hiding place in his luggage and sliced up a lime - licked the back of his hand and poured some damn expensive salt onto the damp patch. The ritual of it all made him feel a little calmer - the _one two three_ step of it made him feel...a little more in control.

 _Not a drunk if you can do it in the right order, do it the right way._

That thought got him through four shots and then Spike came out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel through his hair, completely naked. Xander choked on his fifth drink.

"What the fuck _happened_ to you?" he wheezed, coughing, and Spike stood there blinking at him. Confused, it was obvious. He was translucently pale - almost skeletally thin - and there was a hell of a scar twisting down his left thigh and over his knee. A scar, and something wrong with the muscle there. Xander shook his head. Spike had bruises all over - more scratches like the ones on his face, all red with fever. And little bloody spots, little - bites. Bites Xander recognized from a long and ugly week in Calcutta.

"Fucking rat bites. Those are rat bites, Spike, Jesus!"

"Huh?" Spike looked down at himself for a moment and then clumsily slung the towel around his shoulders, hugging it close. "Fucking f-freezing in here," he said. He stumbled over to his backpack and started pulling out clothes and Xander found himself jumping up - swaying just a little and touching the back of his chair for balance. 

"No! No, no no. You're _not_ putting those clothes back on; they stink worse than you do."

"I'm cold," Spike snapped, and Xander could see him shaking - goose bumps on his arms and shoulders.

"Well, too bad. I'm gonna burn that shit."

"It's my _gear_!" Spike shouted, hastily wadding everything back into the pack and hugging the filthy thing to his chest. "Keep your sodding hands off! Right, I'm not - not gonna stay here and - fuck you and fuck A-angel and - I'm gonna -"

"Knock it off, Spike, you're not going anywhere."

"You're bloody well n-not stopping me!" Spike snatched up his coat and started to struggle into it and Xander watched him, just high enough that he felt like....

 _Can take him. Take that bastard...one good punch like I always wanted to...._

"Wanna bet?"

"Sod off," Spike muttered, pulling his coat shut over his chest. The towel was still around his neck, bulging out the top of the coat collar and he looked - absurd. "I'm not putting up with your shite or his either, I -" Spike stopped and swallowed hard. He looked abruptly _paler_ , if that were possible.

"What - what?" Xander asked.

"Don't feel good," Spike said, and bolted for the bathroom, awkward on his fucked-up leg. His shoulder hit the door jamb and he spun half around - stumbled and fell to one knee, and then both, and then he was crawling to the toilet, backpack forgotten and his coat half off his shoulders. He shoved the toilet open and hung his head down, and Xander turned away, grimacing at the painful sound of Spike throwing up. He rubbed irritably under the patch, wishing he could take it off but...not willing to. Not now.

"Fuck...me...." Xander poured a sixth shot and drank it fast, forgetting about the lime and the salt. Fuck the ritual, he needed to get drunk.

"Gotta be something...something...missed something...." Spike was sitting on the floor, hunched over his backpack. Xander had reluctantly given him sweatpants and socks and a t-shirt to wear, then gone down to the lobby and bought him a Jaguars football sweatshirt. He looked like a child in the bulky black and gold shirt. A freaked-out, ADHD child who was methodically stripping down every seam and pocket in the backpack and in the small mound of clothing that had come out of it. At the moment he was actually ripping open the seams of a pair of ratty khakis and Xander watched with detached interest, sipping at his seventh - maybe eighth...well, who _cared_ \- drink. Sucking slowly on a wedge of lime and grimacing when Spike put the edge of the filthy pants between his teeth to shred them better.

"You're gonna get typhus or something, doing that," Xander muttered and Spike glared at him over the rags of shredded cloth, looking like an insane terrier. Xander felt a giggle bubbling up and he stifled it - hiccupped instead. Spike's journal and the pile of clippings were lying between them and Xander squinted at the top clipping, but he couldn't read it.

"Fuck you. Why don't you _help_ me? Gotta find it -" Spike spat threads and bits of cloth out and shredded the khakis the rest of the way - pawed frantically through the remains. "It's not _here_ , it's not here, fucking bastards took it.... Know I had some, _know_ I did...." His movements were getting choppy - frantic - and he pounded his fists on the floor, punctuating his words. "Where is it, where is it, _where the fuck is it_!" He hurled the shredded bits of his clothing in all directions and sat there, panting. "It has to be here, I fucking need it!" His voice sounded raw, like it was going.

"What're you looking for?" Xander asked, and Spike shot him a desperate, furious glare. 

"Shut the _fuck up_! You're not helping, you - _You_...." Spike's expression changed, from hysterical to speculative to knowing in about ten seconds. To _mean_.

 _Junk yard dog,_ Xander thought distractedly and put his glass down a little too hard, wincing at the _crack_. "Me, what?" His heart was beating just a little faster because all of a sudden he remembered Spike was a predator. One that didn't like him. 

"You took it. While I was in the shower or - or when I was sick. You took it, you bastard, I'm _on_ to you, and you'd bloody well better give it the fuck _back_ or I'm g-gonna gut you." Spike was struggling to his feet - hissing in pain when he twisted his bad leg; shaking and shaking and shaking so hard he was starting to stutter. "F-fucker, should'a n-n-known you'd.... _All_ you bloody C-Council w-wankers - all alike -"

"I didn't touch your shit, Spike - probably get lice if I did." 

Spike was on his feet now - kicking aside the torn pack and stalking three awkward, lopsided steps closer. Close enough Xander could smell the rank sweat and too-sweet hotel soap on him. The chemical tang of the new, heavily-printed shirt. "Shut the fuck up, Harris an' give it _back_."

"Give _what_ back!" Xander snapped, pushing himself to his feet and then clutching desperately at the desk as the room tilted under his feet. 

_Should have had something to eat, damn...._

"My _gear_ , my _skag_ , my fucking _drugs_! You fucking know what, now _give it back_!" Spike lunged and Xander tried to sidestep, but he got tangled in the chair, and Spike plowed into him, fists hitting wildly. Glancing off Xander's jaw and head and shoulder, bony knees knocking into Xander's knee and thigh as Spike all but climbed him.

"Get the fuck off me!" Xander shouted, pushing hard - jerking away and tripping over the chair and they both went down, solid _thud_ of Xander's head onto carpet and concrete. He lay there for a moment, dazed, while Spike squashed him and then got two fistfuls of his shirt and shook him.

"I'll fuckin' rip you apart, I'll - give it back, you fucker, it's _mine_ -!"

"I don't have it, you asshole!" Xander yelled. He shoved his palms flat against Spike's chest, ready to push him up and off again and.... 

_What the fuck, what the **fuck** , what is - what -_

"Spike, what the hell -"

"Bloody bastard!" Spike's fist came out of nowhere and clocked Xander hard, ear and cheek - made him bite the inside of his cheek and made his eye blur and tear and he snarled - unbalanced Spike with a convulsive heave of his entire body and rolled over on him - drew back his own fist and punched _hard_ , connecting solidly with Spike's jaw.

And Spike - was out. Just like that. "Fucker," Xander muttered. He got up, dazed - staggered to the desk and leaned there, panting. He lifted his glass and drained the last of his drink. His head was throbbing and his face stung - his shoulders and chest burned where Spike had clawed at him. Spike lay there, limbs splayed out and mouth open, eyelids cracked just a little so that Xander could see blood-shot white. It was creeping him out. 

The clippings had been scattered around like newsprint leaves. Xander stumbled to the bathroom and splashed a double-handful of cold water in his face, the patch up in his hair for the moment. He dried off and peered at himself in the mirror. Red skin around his eye, but that was all. He slipped the patch back down and went back out - slumped down at the desk and drained the last of his drink. Spike stirred, mumbling.

"If my eye swells shut or anything, I'm gonna strip you naked and shove you out the door," Xander muttered. 

Spike seemed to swim, hands and legs moving in jerky, slo-mo motions until he got himself turned over - got himself as far as his knees where he stopped altogether. He was hunched - shaking - fingers pressing hard into his thighs, digging in. "Fuck, fuck...." He looked up finally, turning his head in a slow sweep until he saw Xander. "Harris, you gotta - gotta help me, I - it fuckin' _hurts_ , just - gimme -"

"I don't have your drugs, Spike! I don't have _any_ drugs. And I don't have to help you, not after you - fucking attacked me."

"You stole my -!"

"Shut up! I didn't steal anything from you. The cops took it, or you lost it, or you shoved it up your fucking arm but I did _not_ steal anything from you!" Spike just stared at him, his face pale and too thin - his hair lank now, sticking to his neck and forehead in sweaty tendrils. His eyes huge and bloodshot and sheened with moisture, and Xander poured out some more tequila and drank it down, one hard gulp. Spike was _not_ crying.

He was leaning over his own thighs, moaning - digging his knuckles in and then his elbows - pounding his thighs with his fists and panting for air in a wet, broken way that sounded too much like -

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"It fucking _hurts_ you bastard!" Spike shouted, head snapping up and oh, yeah, he was - "It hurts, it's like - s-sodding knives - _fuck_." His arms went around his belly and he groaned and Xander fumbled his glass, almost dropping it.

"You are _not_ gonna be sick on the carpet! Get into the bathroom!"

"Not sick," Spike wheezed. He shuffled on his knees to the bed - levered himself upright, his arms trembling hard under him. The sweatpants hung down too low, so low Xander could see skin and crack and bruises. The sweatshirt sleeves hung over Spike's knuckles and he absently dragged one under his nose, sniffing - standing there with one arm still wrapped around his belly like he was gonna heave.

"Go in the bathroom for God's sake," Xander said, and Spike shot him an agonized look and made his way carefully across the carpet. He shoved the door shut hard and Xander sat there a minute - winced at the noises he could hear, and got up and found the remote and turned the TV on, pretty loud. No, Spike wasn't throwing up again but his stomach wasn't happy, that was for sure.

When Spike finally came out he could barely walk. Xander watched him laboriously kneel down and pick up the scattered clippings, shuffling awkwardly in the too-big pants. He picked up the journal and tucked the clippings under the binding around the book, his hands shaking. He stood up, hunched over and breathing hard, and went over to the other bed - tugged clumsily at the covers. After a minute he managed to pull them down and then he crawled inside and curled up, the book clutched tight to his chest.

Xander stubbornly pretended to watch _M*A*S*H_ for another five minutes and then he got up with a sigh and pulled the sheet and blanket up around Spike's shoulder - smoothed the duvet and stood there a minute. Spike was shuddering all over, sweat-damp and pale, his teeth chattering - rapid, porcelain clicks. "What about some kinda pain pill?" Xander asked, and Spike nodded rapidly, not even opening his squinched-tight eyes.

Xander dug out his toiletry bag and then found the pill bottle. He didn't actually _need_ the pills anymore - but sometimes he just...needed them. He shook one out onto his palm - looked over at Spike and shook out another and then poured a measure of Jack into a fresh glass.

"Here. They're those Oxycontin pills."

Spike struggled up onto an elbow and took the pills, getting them into his mouth with clumsy fingers. His jaws moved, crushing them. 

"Hey! You're not supposed to do that!" Xander said, and Spike cracked one eye open.

"Just breakin' 'em in t-two. S'okay, d-done it before." He took the glass out of Xander's hand and lifted it to his mouth - drank it all in one swallow, grimacing. Then he pushed the glass blindly toward Xander and slumped back down on the bed, panting. "Okay, okay...count ta...five hundred...be feelin' it then...jus'.... _One...two...th-three...._ " 

Spike whispered the numbers, curled tight around the book and a wedge of covers, and Xander grabbed his second bottle of tequila and kicked off his shoes - settled back into his place on his bed. He stared blindly at the TV, listening to Spike's labored, rough-edged voice count to about three-hundred and eighty and then stumble. Start again, three-hundred...eighty-three...stutter, fade out. 

Silence. 

When a commercial came on, Xander finally gave in and looked over at Spike. He was asleep - or maybe unconscious. Face slack and mouth a little open and Xander watched him for a long, long moment before slowly getting up - going over - putting his fingers lightly on Spike's throat. Spike twitched slightly and then sighed and Xander sighed, too.

Under his fingers - under the bruised, scratched skin - Spike's heart beat, a little too fast but steady. 

Real. 

Spike wasn't dead anymore.

Xander fell asleep around two, sodden with tequila but not feeling as drunk as he wanted. He swallowed three aspirin with half a bottle of water and rolled over on the bed, not bothering to undress - not even bothering to take off the patch. It had gone beyond irritation to numbness and he just didn't care.

Spike woke him around ten, moaning and thrashing. The journal fell out onto the floor with a thump and Xander toed it from his hunched position on the edge of the mattress. Then he got up and took a shower, and brushed his teeth, and went to find some breakfast, a double swallow of the hair of the dog fortifying him against the sullen Florida heat.

When he got back to the room Spike was pressed tight to the window, his hands doing a slow scrape up and down the glass. He'd shed everything but the t-shirt and his legs and ass were skinny and hairless - blue-plum-green with old bruises and an angry red around the bites.

"Jesus, Spike! You're so fucking lucky we're in a corner room!" Beyond the smeared glass was only a privacy fence and some gigantic pampas grass plants. 

Spike twitched faintly, slowly sliding down until he was sitting sloppily cross-legged. "Hot," he mumbled.

Xander walked over to him and looked down at him - grimaced at the raw mess that was both of his inner elbows. "You sure have fucked yourself up." He tried his best not to let his gaze linger on the soft, pale curl of Spike's flaccid penis, resting just below the hem of the t-shirt.

"Hurts. Fuck...in'...h-hurts...." Spike said, his voice thick. He kept licking his lips and Xander turned around to get his water bottle - kicked something with his shoe that rattled. His pill bottle, open and spilling out little yellow pills. Not _enough_ little yellow pills.

Xander reached down and yanked Spike to his feet, his fists bunching and tearing the thin t-shirt. Spike hung in his hands like wet laundry, strengthless and boneless. "What the fuck did you - _Spike_ \- how many?"

"Fuckin' hurts, H-harris. It...." Spike's lips were kind of blue and his chest didn't seem to be rising often enough and Xander wondered, in a weird, dizzy sort of way, at the fury that rose up in him. 

"It's gonna hurt more in a minute, you asshole!" Xander spat, teeth clenched and face inches from Spike's. 

_Don't know anything about it, don't have a fucking clue, you bastard, you fucking bastard how **dare** you-!_

It took the ambulance almost fifteen minutes to get there and the whole time Xander debated if punching Spike in the stomach would make him throw up. 

When they let him into Spike's room at the hospital, there were grey-blue stains around Spike's mouth from the charcoal they'd made him swallow, and soft Velcro restraints holding him to the bed. The scratches on his face had been cleaned. Xander stood at the foot of the bed for a long time, watching Spike breathe - listening to the steady beep of the heart monitor. Then he called Giles.

"He's _human_ , Giles! He's not a vampire anymore! How the hell does that happen?" 

_And why didn't anybody say anything?_ Not that they would. Why should they? Everybody knew - Xander hated vampires, Xander hated _Spike_. But -

"Yes, I'm aware of his...condition, Xander. When it happened, Angel called me - wanted the Council to use its resources and thoroughly investigate this...phenomena. Unfortunately, Spike has...resisted coming to us."

"Gee, really? Did you _tell_ anybody? It's been _three years_ , Giles!" There were fifteen ceiling tiles from the corner to the light fixture.

"It just didn't seem - Why are you calling, again? I thought Spike would be on his way here by now."

"We - he was sick." Xander shoved his hand in his jeans-pocket and clutched the key ring there. His keys, from his house. "And then he took a couple of my pain pills -"

"Are you still getting the headaches, Xander? I thought -"

"I just keep the pills around as a backup," Xander said, lifting his head creakily from the stiff, upholstered back of the chair he was sitting in. Spike was blinking at him from the bed, blue eyes slitted and bloodshot.

"Look, they want to - I need a fax from his regular doctor that says it's okay to release him and that he has a bed waiting in a facility in Cleveland."

There was a long silence on the other end and Xander could faintly hear Giles breathing - could hear someone else talking. Probably Andrew. He let his head drop back down onto the chair back. 

"Xander, I really don't think -"

"What, exactly, was he going to London _for_ , Giles? What was he gonna do over there?"

"Well, there are several spells we wanted to -"

"You were gonna run tests on him like a guinea pig, Giles."

There was a startled huff of breath down the line. "Xander, that's _hardly_ -"

"You've got the fax number, Giles, and you've got an hour." Xander hung up the phone and pushed the little wheeled cart it sat on away. There were seventeen tiles from the light to the other side of the room.

"Harris? What're....you d-doing here?" Spike asked. His voice was wincingly raw - barely above a whisper - and Xander sighed and sat up.

"I came to take you home."

Spike blinked some more - ran his tongue over lips that were cracked and bloodstained, grimacing. "Ss-sunnyhell...s'gone, Harris."

"Yeah, I know." Xander watched Spike try to stretch his hand up toward his face only to be pulled up short by the restraints. He looked completely bewildered. "Someplace else."

"Oh. All right...." His eyes fluttered shut, then open, then shut again - stayed shut. 

Xander watched him for another minute and then slouched lower in the chair, feeling his back twinge. 

_Should have brought the damn tequila...._

The fax came through in fifty-four minutes.

Xander gave Spike two more of his Oxycontin and all but carried him onto the plane - waved faxes and questionable doctor's papers at the crew and got Spike belted in, half-drowned in the folds of his coat. The flight attendants hovered and fluttered, and even unconscious and looking like an advertisement for anorexia, Spike still had... _it_.

 _Whatever the hell 'it' is. Something I only have with geeks and girls under the age of sixteen. Oh, and guys with a death-wish, can't forget that…._

Xander ordered a Bloody Mary and crunched his celery morosely all through take-off. Four hours to Chicago, then they had to change planes to get to Cleveland. Xander hoped the pills would last until they were safely in his car - safely headed home, to normal October weather.

 _I am out of my mind. Completely out of my mind. Worse than Spike, even!_

Spike shifted sluggishly - muttered something unintelligible, his eyes slitting open for a moment in the dimness of the cabin. Xander downed the last of his drink and signaled for another. 

_Just get me home...maybe I'll figure out why the hell I'm doing this once I'm home…._

But he didn't have any more of a clue driving down I-90 - taking his exit into Tremont - heading east toward the river and _home home home_ , like some sort of migrating bird. Spike was a little brighter, sitting slouched but eyes open in the passenger seat.

"Where're we at?" he asked finally, his voice a little slurred, his eyes narrow and blue and _different_. Spike's stare had never been that...old before.

"We're home. Well, my home. Cleveland."

Spike blinked and looked out the window again - hummed for a moment, ghostly scratch of a voice. "' _Cause the Cuyahoga River...Goes smokin' through my dreams...._ "

"Yeah, exactly," Xander said softly, and turned onto Third Street. His street. 

_Almost there, almost there...._

He wasn't sure, exactly, why he wanted to be home so _badly_. But his little voice was telling him that it was the best - the _only_ place to be right that minute, and he didn't fight that little voice. Good or bad, it was the only direction he had in his life anymore, and he didn't ignore it. 

Much.

"This is me," Xander said, pulling his car into the driveway and up in front of the ramshackle garage. He hadn't gotten around to fixing that up too much yet. The house was an old frame house - two stories, wrap-around porch, gingerbreading and little, scrolly details in every corner. Even a couple of panes of old, leaded glass in the upper story, stained a faded blue. A lot of it Xander had fixed, and more than fixed. Saved - rebuilt - polished smooth and perfect. It kept his mind off...things.

Kind of like the beer. And the pills.

"Posh digs, Harris," Spike mumbled, squinting against a stray shaft of sunlight, peering at the house. White and green and grey with a touch of scarlet here and there - day lilies and hastas and iris and other easy, self-propagating plants in the beds flanking the porch and foundation. Things that girls with lives that moved too fast had planted and left behind.

"Yeah - used to be the Slayer house, when the Hellmouth here was open." Xander turned the car off and got out - dragged carry-on and briefcase over the seat and out. "Let's get inside."

"Sure. Wouldn't want the neighbors to see me," Spike said, fumbling with the seatbelt.

"Oh, fuck the neighbors. I'm tired." Tired, sore, headache - sick to death of Spike already and why in _fuck_ had he thought bringing the ex-vampire, ex-champion, ex-pain in the ass back here was a good idea? 

_I need a fucking drink._

Spike managed to undo the seatbelt and follow Xander inside, hitching at the sweats Xander decided were his now. He sure as hell didn’t want them back. Somebody at the hospital had cleaned the coat - some awe-struck idiot candystriper, Xander guessed, who'd believed his story about Spike being a vet. The same idiot who'd got Spike a razor and helped him shave, and Xander was secretly glad of that, because the scruffy-bearded look was just too...weird. 

Inside the house it was chilly, the air still and slightly stale. Xander hung his keys on the little peg-board by the door and went straight upstairs. The downstairs was where the kitchen was - the big living room and the office and three bedrooms that had housed Slayers. 

Xander didn't live downstairs. He lived up. Two bedrooms, bathroom, and one big room across the back of the house with a little kitchenette in one corner and all his electronic stuff in the other. Empty middle space where he did...stuff. Tools and workbenches and things along the wall and three tall windows that framed trees, train tracks and the river.

Xander dropped his carry-on and briefcase at the top of the stairs - stepped out of his shoes and walked straight to the middle window. 

"That some sort of Zen thing? Yoga or somesuch shite?" Spike's voice was less slurred now - a little clearer and a lot meaner. 

"It's windows, Spike. Even _you_ should be able to see that." Xander finally surrendered to the burning irritation of sweaty cotton and too-tight elastic and took the patch off - shoved it into his jeans-pocket. He rubbed absently at the side of his face, blinking. Wanting to turn away when Spike shuffled up beside him.

"Here - how in fuck - why in hell d'you wear a patch, Harris?" 

Spike's face was soft with surprise, his eyes wider and his mouth open and Xander sighed. Rubbed his left eye and looked out the window again, waiting for his vision to focus and settle. The sky outside was a soft, deep purple, shading to navy along the horizon. There were lights here and there, scattered like points of static flame and the last, ruddy beams of the setting sun glinted carmine and prune-purple and turquoise off the river.

"It's a long and fucked up story and I really don't wanna tell it right now." At Spike's sour look, he added: "Why are you alive?"

"Because the world's a fucked up place, that's why," Spike muttered, and walked away - walked over to the shelves where the DVDs lived and started poking through them. His hands were shaking and Xander sighed again.

_Probably needs another hit. Really don't want him doing the withdrawal thing up here.... Fuck._

"I'm hungry - I'm gonna order some food." Spike didn’t say anything and Xander shrugged - went over to the junk drawer in the kitchenette and pulled out the delivery menus. Tonight, he felt like ribs. Big, greasy ribs with corn and home fries and coleslaw - slabs of buttery Texas toast. Carbs and fat and dead animal flesh, and maybe he could shake the nauseating buzz of a day's worth of travel.

Forty minutes, they said, so Xander took a shower and put on flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt - shrugged into his ratty hoodie that he kept on the back of the bedroom door, and shuffled his feet into fleecy slippers. Willow's idea of a joke, last Christmas, and even when their old-man aura made him wince, he'd been happy to have them when the temperature had dipped below zero.

When he came out of his bedroom, his carry-on was open and his toiletries bag was up-ended on the top of the stairs, contents scattered. And Spike was curled up on his couch, fleece throw pulled haphazardly over his legs. Xander cursed, looking over the mess. The bottle of pills was gone. 

_Fuck. Need to know how many he took. Last thing I fucking need is him ODing here...shit...should have thought...._

Xander went over and roughly shook Spike's shoulder. Spike jerked away from him, batting weakly at Xander's hand.

"Where in fuck are the pills, Spike? How many'd you take?"

"Jus' a couple, Harris - f-fuck, they're on the - sink." Spike waved a thin hand toward the opposite corner and Xander glanced over - saw the bottle sitting there, lid off and a glass sitting next to it.

"Don't fucking take my stuff, Spike. Not without asking." Spike blinked at him, slow as molasses and only halfway there, and Xander wanted to shake him again, if only to get that look of idiot confusion off his face. 

_Like he's not even all fucking there - not in there even without the damn pills…._

"I ordered food -"

"M'not hungry," Spike said, and burrowed down into coat and cushions. Xander stared down at him for a minute and then shrugged. 

"Well - good. More for me, then." He scooped up his stuff and put it all away, pills going into the drawer in the bedside table.

When the food came, Xander ate steadily until every last bit was gone, then he washed up, locked up, and went to bed. He spared a thought for Spike on the couch but then dismissed him from his mind. Spike was out, Xander was tired and fuck it. There was other stuff in the bathroom, and if Spike wanted to OD then Xander could just drag him down to the river and topple him in. 

_And hello, morbid-me. Haven't seen you in a while._

Morbid-Xander just flashed a blood-flecked grin, and Xander downed the last of his whisky and went to bed.

He woke to the sound of something breaking and was awake and on his feet, heart pounding, before he even remembered Spike. Too many years of life-and-death in the dead of the night, and he sagged back onto the edge of the bed for a moment, catching his breath. Listening to random bumps and bangs and then Spike's voice, cursing.

"Fucking - _hell_ -" Spike sounded shaky - desperate - and Xander jerked on his clothes in the pale grey-blue of nearly-dawn, kicking the edge of his door and hissing in pain as he struggled into his hoodie - strode out of his room and into the kitchenette. Where half the cabinet doors were open - plates and cups and pots and things shoved around or stacked on the counter.

"What the hell are you doing?" 

Spike was kneeling on the edge of Xander's kitchen counter, head and shoulders deep in the cabinet that held - well - Xander didn't really know what it held. Something breakable, 'cause it was on the floor in pieces. 

Spike jerked around at Xander's voice, clutching at the edge of the cabinet. Stripped down to sweats and t-shirt, his knuckles bloody and his face pale and sweating. "Looking for the God damn _pills_. What the fuck've you done with them?"

"I put 'em away since they're _mine_ , you asshole." Xander hated being jerked out of sleep like that - he felt cold and shaky, only half awake. He hugged his arms around his ribs, yawning.

"Well, I bloody well need one. Need soemthing to - fucking _go away_ ," Spike shouted and jabbed furiously at thin air - at the wall. The wall didn't dent but Spike's knuckles did and he cursed and sucked at them, glaring at Xander.

"You need to get the hell down from there. What'd you break?"

Spike looked down at the floor, twisting on his knees, the soles of his feet clean and white, his nails too long but oddly white, too. "Dunno. Some kind of big - bowl."

"Oh." The punch bowl. He'd bought it for a Christmas party two years ago - hadn't touched it since. 

_No big loss. Except he doesn't need to be up in my fucking cabinets breaking my stuff. Looking for drugs, for Christ's sake._

"You owe me. Now get _down_."

"Where'd you put the fucking pills, Harris?" Spike twisted around more and sat - pushed off the counter and landed inches from razoring glass. Xander finally noticed that his workbenches were ransacked - his DVDs and CDs all pulled out onto the floor - everything gone through.

 _Oh, you fucking did **not** -_

"You complete motherfucker! Look what you did!"

Spike followed Xander's waving hand with an indifferent - narrowed - gaze. "It's not that bloody bad, I'll put it back, just gimme -"

" _No_. You don't get shit. Except maybe locked up. I should _never_ have brought you back here." 

Spike sucked in a breath and glared at Xander, arms locked around his ribs. He was sweating a little, a fine dew of it on his upper, lightly-stubbled lip. "I didn't bloody well _ask_ you to, did I, you sanctimonious prat! Was doing fine on my own."

"Yeah, in _jail_ -"

Spike pushed his hands back through his sweat-tendriled, too long hair, digging in and _pulling_ in a way that looked damn uncomfortable. "They would have let me out! Don't have money to fuckin' keep me there, didn't have any damn beds, and I only got pissed and broke a window." Spike's hands slipped down out of his hair and dragged over his neck - shoulders - arms. Where nails met skin, he left marks behind. 

"Don't -"

"Thirty days, maybe, and I'd have been out with some new clothes and some - some drugs from one'a the other b-bastards in there and - and - _fuck_ , it's fucking hot in here, it's - God damn bugs, Harris, you've got -"

"I don't have bugs, you idiot, it's _you_. You've got the - DT's or whatever."

Spike just stared at him, his eyes too wide and too dark - more pupil than anything else. Scratching his arms again - longer, deeper and a little more frantic and Xander felt his gut curdling, watching the skin redden and then split under the ragged edges of Spike's broken nails. 

"Spike, look -"

"God _damnit_ , fucking hot - Jesus, filthy fucking house -" Spike twisted, clawing at his stomach - ripped the t-shirt up and off and raked his chest, a look of growing panic on his face. "What the fuck are they, what've you - _Harris_ , damnit -" Spike was jerking, now - twisting and scratching and _kicking_ \- blood smearing across his ribs and the sweats slipping down - showing a bruised, too-prominent hip bone and a dark curl of hair.

Jittering not quite in place and Xander put his hand out, looking around for the broom. "Spike, damnit - just stand still! You're gonna -"

" _Fuck_! Fucking - God damn -" Spike took one step too many and his foot skidded through the shards of glass, leaving a glittering ruby trail over the varnished floor. "Jesus - Christ!" His voice went high and shrill and he reeled back into the cabinets and hit, hard. Slid down the pale wood, his hands gripping his ankle. He was back to the shaking - back to sweating and looking like he might puke at any moment. 

Xander leaned and snatched the broom from the crack between 'fridge and counter - did a quick one-two-three sweep at the glass, grimacing as the bristles smeared the blood. "Sit still, just - lemme look -" He went to his knees, taking Spike's ankle in his own hands and lifting his foot, squinting at it. Spike twitched in his grip, hands absently clawing at this thighs and Xander spared a moment's thought that at least he couldn't draw blood through the thick sweats.

"There's a piece of glass in here, I gotta get it out - hold still -"

"Fuck, fuck, buggering - _fuck_ , will you leave me alone?" Spike tried to jerk his foot away and Xander jerked back hard, ignoring the sudden shift of Spike's tone from 'pissed off' to 'panicked'. "Just leave me the fuck alone! Please, please, _please_!"

Xander looked up sharply, scowling - ready to snap something but Spike wasn't looking at him - wasn't looking at anything. Was twisting his fingers in his hair again - leaning forward and then _bang_. His skull connected hard with the cabinet behind him and Xander jumped, his hand squeezing hard around Spike's ankle. Probably hurting him. 

"Knock it the fuck off!" Spike ignored him - didn't hear him - and _bang_ again. _Bang, bang, bang_ , harder and faster. "Stop it - _stop it_ -"

"Out, out -get the fuck out -" Spike slammed himself back hard enough that the cabinet door cracked and Xander just stood up and _yanked_ \- jerked Spike down the cabinet and onto his back and then sat on him, Spike's leg pretzeled up toward his face and Spike's bony hips digging into Xander's ass.

"Hold fucking still and let me get this fucking glass out!"

"Lemme go - Harris, stop it, just - fucking _stop it_ \- ow - ow!" Spike twisted and clawed Xander's back - flailed out with his fist and hit the broken cabinet and Xander tossed a bloody, two-inch shard of glass into the sparkling little blood-spattered pile in the corner. Spike's torn t-shirt was by his knee and he picked it up and shredded it a little more, wrapping and tying and watching the blood start to seep through. 

"Christ. You're gonna need stitches, this isn't stopping."

Spike convulsed under him, gasping, and his other foot skidded on the floor as his hands pushed uselessly at Xander's back. " _No_ \- no, I don't - just let me - Harris, let me the fuck up, just -"

"You need stitches -"

"I'm gonna be sick!" Spike yelled and Xander stood up fast - reached down and yanked Spike up by his arm and the waist of his sweats and shoved him hard toward the sink. Spike yelped when his foot hit the floor and then he leaned over the sink and threw up hard - hard enough to make Xander reach up over the stove and grab the bottle of scotch he kept there. _Not_ his favorite drink, but fuck, he needed.....

 _Need a little calm around here. Jesus. Need to get him the fuck out of here. What the hell was I thinking?_

Spike gagged again, the sound raw and horrible, nothing coming up but bile. He reached and fumbled the faucet on - put shaking hands under the stream and rinsed and rinsed his mouth - slicked a handful of water back through his hair and then hung there, breathing. 

_Breathing. Damnit. Breathing and bleeding and puking and having bugs in his eyes or whatever in my damn kitchen, in my damn house... in my damn **life**._

Xander took a long drink from the bottle - coughed and wiped his mouth and then held it out. "Here. Get the taste out."

Spike looked around slowly, water beaded on his face - on his lashes. Dripping from the ends of his hair onto his shoulders, and Xander watched his hand reach for the bottle and miss it. Reach again and Xander moved it and Spike's fingers curved around the neck. Brought it to his mouth and clattered the glass against his teeth, and Xander watched a drop of water run down the side of Spike's throat and pool in the deep indent of his collarbone. 

"Thanks." Scratched-thin voice, barely a whisper. Exhausted slump to his shoulders and the shaking in his hands was moving up and out - shivers that seemed to start somewhere in Spike's bones. He hunched in on himself - took another drink and coughed, wiping his wrist over his mouth and then wiping it under his nose. "Fuckin' mess, me."

"Yeah, just like my fucking house. Shit." Spike's blood was dripping through the t-shirt and Xander turned abruptly and stomped toward his bedroom. Turned around at the door and stared back at Spike who looked like a ghost, standing there under the too-white fluorescent light. "If you freak out or puke in my car or do or say anything fucked up at the hospital I'm gonna tell 'em you're suicidal."

"Fuck you, Harris!" Spike yelled, and tipped the bottle up, gulping. Xander got dressed, knowing the smile on his face was a mean one. He didn't care.

_God. Good Housekeeping and Maxim in the same rack. That's just...weird._

Xander eyed the curvaceous brunette on the cover of _Maxim_ , and then eyed the equally curvaceous but somehow _wholesome_ blonde on _Good Housekeeping_. One was offering an X-rated spa in Barbados, the other cake with only 7 grams of fat. His hand hovered.

"Mr. Harris?" Xander jerked, startled, then turned around, smiling slightly at the woman with the clipboard and iron-grey hair.

"Yeah, that's me."

"I'm Doctor Feeney. You brought in - uh - Spike?"

"Yeah, I did. He ready to go?"

"He's all stitched up, yes. He's showing signs of acute drug withdrawal, Mr. Harris, and of ongoing addiction. We have a strict policy about prescribing pain killers to -"

"Look - Doc - Doctor Feeney...." Xander rubbed his hand up over his face - back through his hair, staring at the woman's orthopedic shoes. The left one had a drop of blood on it. "He's been through some really - rough times. I just got him out of jail down in Florida and brought him up here for rehab." He looked up at her and she nodded slightly, clipboard held casually in the crook of one elbow.

"He's got a bed but not until - until Wednesday." 

_Oh, hell - what day is it? It's...fuck...oh, Monday. Okay, yeah, that sounds good…._

"I know he's - messed up, but he's trying, you know? He really is."

"Mr. Harris..." She nibbled her lip and then sighed - wrote something on her clipboard and then fixed Xander with a fierce, grey stare. "I'm giving him a 'script for Demerol. But only six pills. He should be fine on regular aspirin after that. We used dissolving stitches on his cut - they're more flexible than standard ones, so he doesn't have to come back in." She glanced at her watch and then up at the doors, which had opened to let in a gurney and two EMTs. "Good luck with him, Mr. Harris. A nurse will get him checked out in a little bit."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot," Xander said, but she was already turning away, focusing on the new patient, listening with little bird-like nods to the EMT. 

After about half an hour, Spike emerged in paper slippers and a dark-purple scrub shirt. Shaking hard, huddled down into a wheelchair being pushed by a middle-aged Latina nurse.

"Here you go - he needs to get some rest and some food in him," the nurse said, fixing a stern eye on Xander. Then she looked down at Spike and her expression softened. "Keep your stitches out of the water, Spike," she added, giving him a little grin and he grinned back. A skeletal thing, teeth clicking and his eyes sunk far, far back in his head.

"Do my b-best, Tilda-love. You know what I _r-really_ need is for you to give me ss-sponge baths." Tilda chuckled, her hand stroking gently over Spike's battered knuckles. 

"You know I'm married, _bonito_."

"But if you w-weren't -"

"In a heartbeat." She laughed, then held out a sheaf of papers toward Xander. "Here's the after-care for the stitches and his prescription - there's a 24 hour pharmacy right down the hall, they can get you the crutches he's gonna need. You take care of him, you hear?"

"Yes ma'am," Xander said, old habits still lingering even though his head was throbbing and he wanted to shrug Spike off and let him make his own way. Crawl, if he had to - Xander just wanted to go home. 

_On his fucking death-bed he'd flirt, and Christ...they flirt right back._

Tilda patted Spike's arm and bustled away, and Xander grabbed the wheelchair and jerked it in a half-circle, pointing them both toward the door. "We'll get these later - here." He dug a pill out of his pocket and shoved it into Spike's hand and Spike took it and pushed it past his teeth with a little noise of pure pleasure.

"Guess you're n-not such a wanker after a-all."

"Shut up, Spike. Just shut the fuck up." They didn't say a word all the way home.

Didn't really say anything for the rest of that day and that night. Xander drank and did laundry and angrily cleaned up the kitchen, scrubbing blood off the floor and getting a splinter of glass in his thumb. Went out once to get the prescription filled and all but threw the bottle at Spike, who only grinned and then shook a pill out into his hand, dry-swallowing it. Spike took the entire morning and afternoon putting all the movies and music back. When Xander went to check on it later, he found it all arranged in some bizarre order that made sense only to Spike; _Casablanca_ next to _Mall Rats_ and all the _Star Trek_ movies shuffled in with _Fawlty Towers_. 

Xander made himself eggs and toast - made microwave Hot Pockets later and Spike just watched him eat, a sort of longing in his expression that made Xander uncomfortable. Xander built a fire in the fireplace at the far end of the living room and settled on the couch with the last of the beers and some popcorn. Channel surfing, but really just watching Spike. Brooding about Spike. He finally snapped around midnight, tired but too buzzed and restless from beer and introspection to sleep.

"Why the fuck aren't you eating?" he asked, and Spike looked up from his journal, his eyes unfocused and his expression confused. Flying on his drugs and some of Xander's, and three double shots of the scotch Xander hadn't finished. Just - out of it and too quiet and too _shrunk_. It was making Xander twitchy.

"What?"

"You didn’t eat all day. You didn't eat yesterday. I _know_ you're hungry. Why aren't you eating?"

Spike blinked - looked back down at the journal, Xander being all too obviously dismissed. Spike's finger moved, following a line of text on a curled newspaper clipping and he seemed to sink back into whatever he was reading. Xander snorted in irritation and scooted forward on the couch - kicked the journal away. The clippings spilled into a rumpled fan across the floor.

"Hey!"

"Answer the fucking question!"

"Fuck you!" Spike scrabbled after the journal, snatching at the clippings with clumsy hands and gathering them up. When he had them all together again he snapped the rubber bands back around it - tied the frayed twine. It took him three tries. Xander watched, scowling - clenching a beer bottle in his fist. Spike curled his arm up close to his chest, trying to get himself to his feet one-handed. "I'm - I'm fucking tired, I'm gonna go -"

"No, you're _not_." Xander lurched up off the couch and lunged at Spike - slapped the journal out of his hand and kicked it again. Spike surged up from the floor and Xander knocked him back. It was...ridiculously easy. 

_Not a fucking vampire anymore, not super strong or super fast or super...anything._

While Spike tried to get up without touching his hurt foot to the floor, Xander stomped over to the journal and picked it up. It was heavy - the spine broken and then clumsily fixed with duct tape, the edges worn and nibbled and the pages stained. It smelled of smoke and musty water and Xander crouched down by the fire and held it just above the flames. 

"Harris, don't you fucking _dare_ , don't you -"

"Answer the question, Spike, or I'll let it go." Xander watched Spike lever himself up using the couch - watch him limp closer, his hands twisting together and then clenching into fists. He was panting.

"Give it back, you sodding bastard, give it _back_ , it's _mine_."

" _Answer. Me_."

"It's none of your bloody business! Now give that back to me or I'll -"

"Or you'll _what_ , Spike? You'll hurt me? You'll bite me? You can't do a fucking _thing_ to me." 

Spike snarled, silent grimace of teeth and lips. But his fists were shaking and his leg was and his eyes were darting from the fire to Xander's face, gold-sheened by the flames.

" _Fuck_ you, I'll bloody kill you, give it _back_!"

Xander waved the journal once through the flames, watching the ragged edge of a clipping curl and blacken. Spike saw it, too, and a keen of desperation wrenched itself out of his throat. Xander felt a twist of satisfaction go through him, bitter and mean. "Tell me -"

"Harris, _don't_ , don't, give it back, I need it, Harris! Fuck, c'mon, don't -" Spike limped forward another step and his leg gave out. He came down hard on his knees and stayed there, his hand stretched out and trembling. His fingertips were smudged with ink and a smear of blood where he'd bitten a nail back too far. " _Please_ don't burn my book. H-harris -" Spike's voice cracked, too thick - too breathy. Broken. "Please, I'll - do anything you w-want -"

Xander stared at his agonized expression - at the gleam of sudden moisture in Spike's eyes and the tremble of a chapped, bitten lower lip. The mean feeling flared and went black as abruptly as the clipping had and Xander sighed - sagged back out of his crouch and onto his ass. He slid the book across the floor to Spike, and Spike snatched it up and cradled it protectively, head bent low.

"Fuck. Fine, whatever. Jesus, Spike, what the hell? You're so...."

Spike looked up sharply, the sheen in his eyes actual tears now - tracks of wet that gleamed in the firelight, as surreal a sight as anything Xander had ever seen. Surreal and familiar and Xander pushed Buffy's second death out of his mind. "So - _what_? I'm so different? I'm not my bloody _self_? Fuck you."

"I just wanted to know -"

"Fine!" Spike shouted, and Xander flinched. _Spike_ did, and they both sat there in silence for a moment. "Fine. You want to know why I don't want to eat? I'll tell you. If I don't eat, then I don't _shit_. Mostly don't puke. I can't stand these bloody disgusting h- _human_...." Spike gasped in a hard breath and glared at Xander and Xander stared back, his right side too hot beside the fire, his head pounding.

"Spike, that's -"

"That's _my_ fucking business, Harris. Sod off." Spike climbed awkwardly to his feet, ungainly and exhausted looking - too pale, too thin and too God damn _human_. It was like watching a broken god. Or breaking your favorite toy. "I'm going to...go to bed. Don't...don't fucking t-talk to me anymore." Spike wrenched the throw off the couch and limped painfully away to the stairs and slowly down, and Xander watched his too-dark head sink down and down until it was gone. Then he drank the last of his beer and took one of Spike's Demerol and went to bed, too.

Spike was gone the next day. Gone for two days, and Xander contemplated calling the police or maybe the Council - calling on his own contacts in the city. In the end he got royally, roaring drunk and passed out on the couch. Woke up the same way he had a hundred times before - sober, sane - fucking _normal_. It made him sick in the way the alcohol just...never did, anymore. He built a fire and sat there and fed sticks into it - watched snowflakes drift past his windows, tiny and light as down. It wouldn't stick - it wasn't cold enough - but it made him _feel_ cold. Cold to the very marrow of his bones. 

He singed himself on the fire a few times, watching his skin blister - knowing it wouldn't last. 

_Nothing fucking lasts except...the lasting part... Fuck, fucking Spike and his fucking...humanity. Bastard._

Spike came back around nine the second night, crashing in through the door that Xander had deliberately - cynically - left unlocked. Stomping up the stairs, singing something at the top of his lungs that Xander didn't recognize.

" _Oh, you're so naïve, how could you believe everything I said to you._  
_I got your sex and wrote you rubber checks well, what'd ya think I was gonna do?_ "

"Jesus, you suck!" Xander shouted and Spike stopped dead on the stairs, staring at him. Eyes barely above the top tread, meeting Xander's over the back of the couch.

"Harris! There you are. Thought you'd be out. Not havin' to babysit an' all, thought you go do some kind of -" Spike waved his hand and almost lost his balance - continued up the stairs with a little hop. "Some kind of white-hat thing."

Xander ignored that - picked up his beer and took a long drink. "Where've you been?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know," Spike said, grinning. He strutted over toward the kitchen, his limp almost gone. 

" _I'm remarkably insincere, incredibly insincere, totally insincere -_  
_Oh don't take it so hard, my dear, I'm consistently insincere._ "

"Truer words," Xander muttered, flopping around on the couch and trying to ignore Spike, who rattled around in the kitchen for a minute before coming over. He had a two-liter of Mountain Dew and a huge glass of ice. "Doesn't your foot hurt?"

"Not right now," Spike said, and Xander saw the tenseness of his jaw - the manic brightness of his eyes. 

"What're you on?"

"Not one bloody clue, mate. Just took what they gave me. Lovely bloody stuff." Spike struggled out of his coat and tossed it haphazardly onto the couch - sank down, wobbly and awkward, into a cross-legged position and opened the soda - poured the glass full, not seeming to notice when the foam overran the top and puddled on the floor. It made a damp spot on the leg of the jeans Spike had on.

 _Wonder where in hell he got those?_

"You're making a fucking mess, Spike!"

"Sod. Off." Spike drained half the glass at a gulp and poured out more. "You should play some music, instead of sitting here in the bloody dark, brooding."

"I'm not _brooding_. I was just - relaxing."

"With your thoughts," Spike said, a leer twisting his mouth as he made a jerking off motion with his hand.

"God, you're so fucking disgusting."

"Everybody does it, Harris - no point in pretending."

"'Everybody' doesn't make it a topic of conversation."

"No bloody conversation _here_ ," Spike pointed out, and Xander had to agree. Spike looked around and spotted something - stretched his arm out long and came back with the remote and turned the TV on. He settled himself against the couch, legs stretched out and the glass and soda in the v between his thighs.

"I don't want to watch TV," Xander said. 

Spike ignored him, flipping through the channels too fast to really see anything, working at one boot with the toe of the other, trying to get it off. It seemed to be resisting. "Don't actually give a shite what you want or don't want right now. I feel fucking good and I'm not gonna let you fuck it up." He grimaced, twisting his foot and then his boot slid off with a sort of wet noise and Xander stared in queasy horror at the swaddling of blood-and-pus soaked bandage that was revealed.

"Spike, _fuck_ -"

"It itches," Spike said, glancing down and then away, concentrating on the TV and his soda.

"It _stinks_ ," Xander snapped, aware of not only the ripe-rotten smell of the bandage but of Spike, who was rank with sweat and something else - chemical tang under the stinks of smoke and grease and dirt.

"I'll shower later." Spike reached up for his coat and dragged it down off the couch - rummaged around in the pockets and finally pulled out a little roll of cloth. It looked like a table napkin from some restaurant.

"You need to go back to -"

"Shut _up_ , Harris." Spike finally looked up - looked right at him and his gaze was more than drug-addled. It was black and blank and completely empty and Xander twitched back away from it. "Not going to a doctor, not going to any bloody rehab." He hauled the faded blue sweatshirt he was wearing off, revealing a grey-black t-shirt underneath, two sizes too big. "Going to get on the bloody nod and fucking enjoy." He unrolled the napkin, spilling the contents to the floor. "Now sod _off_."

 _This is my fucking house,_ Xander thought. 

But didn't say, because Spike was looking more and more like some kind of fucking zombie - animate but not all _there_ \- and it was creeping Xander out. He looked thinner, if that were possible, and his cheeks were hollowed under the stubble - that sunken look that Xander had seen so often in Africa. Look that meant someone was.... 

_Dying. He's dying. And he's doing it right here in front of me. Fucker. You don't get to fucking die, you asshole._

He focused on Spike again, who was carefully balancing a lit Zippo on the floor. He was holding a spoon in one hand, and once the Zippo was standing upright, he plucked a piece of crumpled foil off the floor and carefully shook its contents into the spoon.

"What the hell are you doing?" Xander snapped, dismayed at the squeak in his voice.

"I'm cookin' up," Spike said, his voice distracted and distant as he bent down over the spoon and lighter, watching the stuff in the spoon reduce itself to bubbling liquid. His hand tremored and he gripped his wrist in the opposite fist.

"I know what you're _doing_ , I mean - Jesus, Spike!" Xander pushed up off the couch and paced over to the fireplace, feeling like he wanted to punch something. 

_Like Spike. Pound him into the fucking ground._

"If you don't go back to the hospital you're gonna get gangrene or something."

"Like you give a fuck," Spike muttered. He groped across the floor and picked up a slender syringe, and Xander noticed for the first time that he had a piece of rubber tubing tied around his right bicep. 

Xander wanted to stop him - wrestle him to the ground and throw the mess of paraphernalia into the fire - dig his fingers into Spike's knotted, revolting hair and pound his head on the floor until he screamed uncle. Until he stopped being such an asshole. If that were even possible. 

"Like you'd fucking know," Xander muttered back. He crouched down, getting unwillingly closer. Fascinated and disgusted at the same time.

Spike balanced the spoon carefully on the floor. The handle was bent around so it would sit flat without spilling. He picked up the syringe and carefully filled it, his hands shaking harder now, his lip caught between his teeth as he concentrated. Once all the liquid was sucked up he shifted it carefully, holding it poised over his arm but his hand - his whole body - was shaking. Shaking so hard that when he shifted the syringe again, getting a better grip, he fumbled it. The syringe fell onto his thigh and then the floor and Spike's fingers were just - too slow. It rolled into the Zippos and Spike finally put his palm down on it and just sat there, panting just a little. Xander suppressed a snort and Spike looked sharply up at him, frowning.

"What the fuck are you _doing_ , Harris?"

"I never watched a junkie shave a day or two off his life - thought I might learn something," Xander snapped, and Spike's eyes went wide and then narrow - went mean.

"Wanna learn something? Here." He held the syringe out and Xander scowled down at it. 

"What the fuck do you want me to do with that?"

"You wanna learn? Here's your chance. Do it."

"Fuck you, Spike -"

"Harris...." Spike licked his lips - took a sharp little breath. Jitter, jitter, jitter in place, his teeth clicking together sharply when he took a breath. "I'll miss." His voice wasn't sharp anymore - wasn't challenging. It was....

"Fuck. _Fuck_. I fucking hate you," Xander snarled. He took the syringe out of Spike's hand and for a moment he almost threw it away. Almost chucked it in the fire. Then he could pick Spike up and carry him downstairs like the sack of fucking garbage he was - take him to the hospital and get him locked up in a psych ward as suicidal - dangerous. All of that through his mind in seconds as he held the syringe, staring at the brownish liquid inside - at the red, raw punctures in the bend of Spike's elbow. At the hands that twitched and plucked at the seam of the jeans and the hem of the ragged t-shirt. Spike wasn't looking at Xander at all, just...

 _Sitting there looking away like some kind of fucking dog. Beaten up junk yard dog who's pretty sure I'm gonna beat him some more. Fucking...hell._

"This isn't anything fucking new, you know," he said, tucking Spike's right arm up under his own and squeezing - rubbing his thumb over the vein that he could see much too clearly despite the scars. Spike's skin was nearly translucent.

"Don't tell me _you_ -"

"No - fuck no. When I was in Africa I helped put in IVs and stuff sometimes, if I was near a clinic or something." 

"Always the fucking do-gooder," Spike said and Xander shot a glare at him - slid the needle in. Spike didn't flinch. Xander depressed the plunger slowly, watching the drug disappear into Spike's vein. He slid the needle back out and put the syringe down by the spoon. The Zippo was out - out of fluid, it looked like - and Xander snapped it shut. Spike gave a long, shaking sigh and Xander watched him pop the tubing off his arm - watch his whole body ripple and then go lax, his eyes rolling back in his head. "Bloody...f-fucking gorgeous, that is...f-fuck…."

Xander crouched there, watching. Watching Spike arch up a little into the air, a soft sound of pure pleasure vibrating up out of his throat. Xander picked up the stuff and rolled it all back up into the napkin and shoved it into a random pocket of Spike's coat. His fingers touched the journal and he hesitated, but Spike was trying to say something so he left it. For now.

"Har-risss...." Spike focused with difficulty, his head nodding on his neck like a too-heavy flower on a stem. "Thanks, mate...."

"Whatever, Spike. You jerk." Xander moved the glass and soda to the end table and got the remote out from under Spike's leg - flopped back onto the couch and started skimming the channels. "God, I hate you."

"Me too," Spike mumbled, and then his eyes closed and he was out.

When Spike woke up, Xander was just finishing off the last of a bowl of cereal. He watched Spike's eyelids flutter and his eyes sort-of focus almost instinctively on the TV. His gaze was dazed and bloodshot, the lids only half way open. Xander got up and carried his bowl and spoon and cereal box into the kitchen - got a glass of juice and a bottle of water and walked back to the couch. Spike was shuffling his legs and arms in a random sort of way, as if he wanted to get up but couldn't quite figure out how.

"You need something?" Xander asked and Spike flinched - looked up at him and blinked a few times, his mouth a thin, tight line until he recognized who was standing over him. 

"Need to piss," Spike said - wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and got his elbow up onto the couch, levering himself slowly to his feet. He gave a low growl of sound when his hurt foot touched the floor. "Fuck, fuck...." He got himself into a sitting position on the edge of the couch and then sat there, looking down at his foot, his hands white-knuckled on the edge of the cushions. "Don't think I can walk," he said finally. 

Xander sighed and put his glass down on the end table. He wasn't exactly surprised. "You're such a fucking pain. Here." He shoved the water into Spike's hand and hauled him up, Spike's arm over his shoulder, Xander's whole body just too fucking close to dirty ex-vamp. They shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, Spike doing his best not to touch his foot down. Once there, Xander turned him loose and got out. Spike could do the pissing thing on his own.

He went into the kitchen and ran the faucet until the water was good and hot - filled a big plastic tub halfway full and poured Epsom salts into it. He carried it out to the living room - went back for an old towel and a plastic grocery bag and the sticky latex gloves he had tucked into the back of the junk drawer. In a Slayer household, medical supplies came right in with the paper towels and gallons of milk. Xander hadn't bought any in a long time.

He settled back on the couch, flipping through the last few pages of Spike's journal. It wasn't very coherent. Long, rambling sentences about the taste of the night air and the scent of the wind interspersed with latitude and longitude and details gleaned from the clippings, coded with numbers and letters that were copied in shaking hand on the fragile newsprint. It meant nothing at all, at first, but there was _something_ there. Some weird pattern Xander thought he could almost see. He looked up at a thump and saw Spike leaning on the stair rail, lip caught in his teeth.

"Fucking hurts."

"Come over here and I'll fix it," Xander said, and watched Spike inch across the floor, reeling sideways across the empty expanse where there was nothing to hold on to, his swollen big toe just skimming the planks as he tried to hop without touching down. He fell heavily against the back of the couch and then hitched himself over, slithering down into a heap on the cushions. He was pale - sweating - and his lip was bleeding. He saw the journal in Xander's hands and reached for it, eyes wide. 

"Harris, give it back!"

"I'm not hurting it," Xander said. He leaned away from Spike and put the journal on the far end of the couch - slipped down to his knees, picking up the gloves. "Gimme your foot," he said, and Spike looked at the journal and then down at his foot, licking his lips. Uncertainty in his expression but mounting pain, too. Too much of it. 

"Don't poke at me, Harris," Spike muttered, but he held his foot up and Xander found where the bandage had been clumsily tied - undid the sodden knot and then unwound the stinking mess into the plastic bag. The foot that was gradually revealed was swollen, the red skin shiny and hot. The cut across the bottom was open, sutures broken and the edges curling back white. The raw flesh underneath was angry and oozing. All of it - all of _Spike_ that Xander could see - was streaked with filth. 

" _Jesus_ , Spike! Did you just - roll in the dirt? Find a few dead dogs to kick around?" He peeled the gloves off carefully, turning them inside out and dropping them on top of the bandage.

"Fuck you," Spike said, but his voice was cracked - a little breathless - and he was looking down at the wreck of his foot with something like horror. "Christ, that's fucking - disgusting." He took a sharp breath - coughed hard, his shoulders shaking and his voice going a little high - a little hysterical. "It's _rotting_."

"It's infected. Here - you're gonna soak it." Xander laid the towel out and then dragged the tub over - positioned it so Spike could put his foot right down into it. 

"What the fuck good is _that_? Probably got fucking - m-maggots in it -"

"It's too cold for maggots, Spike, for God's sake! Stop being such a fucking pussy." Xander grabbed his ankle and yanked his foot closer - wrinkled his nose at the stench and shoved _down_.

" _Fucking hell_!" Spike tried to jerk away and Xander grabbed his knee and pinched, viciously hard. Spike yelped but froze, shivering. Spike's leg was thin and bony - trembling under Xander's fingers. 

"Fuck, fuck - that sodding well _hurts_ , Harris! Jesus, it burns -"

"It's just Epsom salt and hot water. If you're lucky it'll draw some of the infection out. Just _sit still_." Xander pinched again and Spike jerked - clawed at the back of his hand.

"Get off me!"

"Just do what you're fucking told," Xander snapped, jerking his hand away from Spike's leg. He tied the grocery bag shut and knelt up - lobbed it hard toward the kitchen. It hit the floor and skidded and came to rest a few feet from the trash can. Xander pushed himself up onto the couch and retrieved the journal and Spike stopped fidgeting around and went still, his fingers sinking into his thighs. His nails - what there was of them - were filthy again.

"That's my private stuff, Harris," Spike said. But his voice was uncertain - laced with pain. With exhaustion. Xander patted the cover of the journal and snapped the handful of rubber bands back around it - tossed it into Spike's lap. Spike snatched it up, holding it close.

"I know. I figure you owe me." Xander leaned for his juice - Spike must have left his water in the bathroom - and took a swig. "What is it?"

Spike stroked the cover of the journal - ran a finger slowly down the side, ruffling the edges of newsprint that stuck out. "It's.... It's kind of...." He looked up suddenly, eyes going narrow. Staring at Xander with a look Xander recognized from...before. A sizing-up look, narrow focused and calculating. "If I tell you, you tell me what the fuck is up with your eye - with _you_. Deal?"

 _Was going to anyway,_ Xander thought, but he'd let Spike have this one. 

"Fuck. Yeah, okay."

"Right." Spike almost smiled - looked back down at the journal and sighed instead. He leaned back on the couch, his head going back and his throat stretching taut and white, scarred just under his chin where Xander could see. Crooked slash of silver in the flickering light of the TV. "It's for - I started keepin' it about - six months after...."

"After you turned real?"

"Was already real," Spike snapped, shooting Xander a fierce look. "When the bloody Powers decided I was their golden boy. Fuckers. I never signed on to their bloody crusade. Just wanted -" Spike waved a hand, vague gesture that meant...everything.

"Andrew told us about - what happened. The amulet and stuff."

"Lying fuck; he promised he wouldn't," Spike said, but there was no heat in his voice. "Angel was tryin' not to be a total fucking wanker, brooding about not getting the prize. Some bloody prize." Spike shifted, sloshing the water in the tub a little and hissing in a sharp breath. "Went back to that bloody hotel of his and started up with the same helping the helpless or the hopeless or whatever shite he'd been doing...." Another shift and Spike's eyebrows were drawn down in pain - his lip between his teeth. "Said you were gonna fix this, Harris."

"Huh? Oh. Here." Xander pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and pressed an Oxycontin into Spike's hand - watched him dry-swallow it and grimace. "Want some?" he asked, holding up his juice. 

Spike rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at the bottle. "Fuck, no. Don't you have any beer?"

"You're a fucking pain," Xander said, but he got up and got them both beers and Spike drained half of his in long, gulping swallows - gasped for air and then sat there, staring at the ceiling. Xander took a gulp of his own. "So...Angel, LA, doing...stuff. And you're alive and....?"

"And I'm doing - stuff - too. Helping him save people so bloody stupid it's a wonder they remember to breathe. Killing demons and vamps and all that -" A wave of the beer bottle through the air. "All that shite. Then there's these demons...can't remember what kind. Big and ugly and scaly. And we're fighting and I...kinda forget."

"Forget - what. That you're fighting?"

"That I'm fucking human. Woke up in the hospital, my leg fucked six ways from Sunday and Angelus all broody at the foot of the bed. Tellin' me my fighting days were over, I needed to think about really _living_ , maybe finding some bint -" Spike's voice choked off and he lifted the bottle to his lips, clattering the glass against his teeth. "I told him he was out of his bloody mind. Fighting and fucking, that's what livin's all about." Spike drank again and then was silent and Xander drank his own beer - watched Spike's right hand rub a worn spot on the journal cover, a slow circle that looked so habitual as to go unnoticed. The silence stretched out, thin and stiff.

"I was in that bloody hospital bed for most of a month!" Spike blurted, eyes wide - horrified. Terrified. "Hospital and some bloody - half way house or some such, doing physical therapy. Pins and plates and all kinds of shite in my leg, weak as a fucking kitten.... Angelus fucked off somewhere, left me a fucking _note_. Sold the hotel, dumped a chunk of money in a bank account and told me he wouldn't see me die again. _Bastard_." Spike drained the last of his beer and sat twisting the neck of it in his fingers, squeezing the glass like he wanted to break it.

"So, you got money, you've got a fucked up leg - I don't get it." Xander drained his own beer - sat forward, his hands laced together, dangling the bottle between his knees. 

"Don't get what?" Spike asked. His ragged thumb nail scratched a line through the damp label on the bottle.

"I don't get why you're being such a fucking _asshole_ ," Xander barked, and Spike flinched.

"Fuck you -"

"No - shut up! So you're fucking human - big fucking deal. So are we all!"

" _You_ are, I'm not -" 

Xander let the bottle in his hands slide to the floor - reached over and grabbed Spike's arm, yanking it toward him and digging his thumb into the raw, red mess that was his inner elbow. Spike hissed in pain, trying to jerk away. " _You're_ human too, Spike. Just like the rest of the fucking world, and where the _fuck_ do you get off just - just _wasting_ your fucking life -?" 

Xander's thumb dug harder, splitting skin, and Spike's lips pulled back in a feral snarl. He rammed himself forward, forehead connecting solidly with forehead. A burst of pain - light like sparklers exploding across Xander's vision and he reeled back, letting Spike go.

"Is _that_ what this is? Some bloody - _intervention_?" Spike wiped the back of his hand under his nose - seemed to notice the bottle he was holding and flung it. It hit the stone surround of the fireplace and shattered and Xander flinched. Flinched again when Spike's hand clawed at his shirt and then twisted in it, yanking him close. "You think you know what the fuck this is? Do you?" Spike shoved Xander away and stood, somehow - the first graceful move he'd made in days and for a moment he _was_ Spike. He was the hundred-year-old predator that had made Xander's life a misery once upon a time. 

Then he twisted on his bad leg - skidded, because the cut and the limp were on the same side - and went down, bony ass and hip and elbow thumping down hard. The tub overturned and the milky, bloody water soaked the towel - ran in rivulets toward the fireplace and Xander let it, watching Spike kick the tub away and then just sit. His jeans were soaked to the knee and his foot was bleeding and he just - didn't move. Left leg out straight in front of him, right leg bent and curled under - head in his hands. From tiger to mongrel in seconds.

"Spike, you just -"

"You don't have a fucking clue, mate." Spike's voice was muffled - thick and wet. "You don't know what those bastards did to me."

"They gave you _life_ -"

"They _took_ it!" Spike roared. He gripped his hair in his fists and _yanked_ \- looked up at Xander with eyes that glinted gold-green in the firelight. "I was _immortal_ , Harris! I was strong, and fast, and _nothing_ could stop me and they _took_ it."

"Sunlight could stop you, and a stake -"

"A bloody stake could stop _you_ , you fuck." Spike wiped at his nose again - looked around and spotted his journal and dragged it over - wrapped his arms around it. "When the bloody powers decided to make me human they didn't resurrect the man I _was_ , Harris. William Shaw didn't suddenly wake up and look out on the bloody world! They just - just made me _fit_ in here. Pushed me in and - crushed me down until I -" He dropped the journal suddenly, his fingers were clawing at his chest - at the t-shirt until it tore and then at the skin underneath. Xander pushed off the couch and to his knees and grabbed at Spike's wrists.

"Stop it, Spike, that doesn't -"

"Doesn't help?" Spike's mouth twisted in something like a smile and he coughed out a choking bark of a laugh, his eyes glistening. "Of course it doesn't s-sodding help. _Nothing_ helps! They cut off what didn't fit and sewed me in here _forever_ and I can't fucking take it, Harris. I _won't_ take it."

"Jesus, Spike, it's just - it's just _stuff_. I mean -"

"I was a vampire for close to a hundred and fifty years, you ass. You think I remember how to be human?" Spike twisted his wrists in Xander's grip a little and Xander felt the tendons flex - looked down at how his fingers over lapped his thumbs and how blue the veins in the backs of Spike's hands were. How skeletal his fingers looked. "At least when I'm fucked up...Nothing hurts. I can fucking walk without limping and - and I can fight and not feel the pain... I'm what I used to be, then. What I should be," he added, his gaze focused somewhere else - some _when_ else.

Xander squeezed Spike's wrists a little tighter - watched him wince but not pull away - not even try. "I can't believe you're just - giving up. Can't believe this is _beating_ you. When you got chipped -"

" _Stop_ it, Harris. Just...stop it." Spike's voice was cracking now - going hoarse and low, as if he'd run out of energy to even talk. "You don't understand a bloody thing."

"Sounds like you being a fucking pussy to me."

Spike lifted his drooping head and stared at Xander, some emotion smoldering there. But not enough. "I got sick, the first month I was human. Sick with some - 'flu or something. Felt so fucking awful...had to go to doctors and take all this...shite. And then it came back, or something like it. Every fucking month, every fucking _day_. Some bloody thing or other." 

Spike pulled away finally and Xander let him go - watched him rub at his wrists in a distracted way and then gather up the journal again. "I can't _see_ , Harris, you know that? Was okay at first but it's getting worse all the time. Can't hear a damn thing.... My fucking _bones_ hurt, in the cold. It's why I was down in that Godforsaken place, trying to follow summer. Bones and joints feel like they've got fucking glass in them." Spike lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped his eyes - wiped his nose, leaving a dark spot. Xander stared at the hollow of his belly - the scar that cut across from rib to navel, thin and curved.

"Spike -" he said. And then nothing. Nothing would come. 

_I'll sound like a fucking Lifetime movie no matter what I say. Jesus. And he's right. I don't know...anything._

"Yeah, Spike. William the Bloody, only I'm just another fucking human, aren't I? In a defective fucking body."

Xander sighed - looked around at the mess and stood up, dragging the soaked towel and the tub with him. "Jesus, Spike, I... I don't...I'm _sorry_ , okay, but, fuck - you're gonna kill yourself if you don't quit with the damn drugs."

Spike laughed, a tearing sort of sound, looking up at Xander and then away, shaking his head. "I forgot, you're a _D.A.R.E_. kid, aren't you? Just say sodding no. Grew up on that shite, yet here you are, all pain pills and whiskey and hypocrisy." 

"It's not the same thing," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed again.

"Course it is. It's exactly the same thing. The world's rubbing you raw - getting under your skin one fucking razor-edge at a time and you need something to make it...less. Make it bearable."

"No, I -"

"If you're gonna lie to me, Harris, just fuck off. I'm too bloody tired to listen to your lies." Spike _looked_ tired - tired to death. Shoulders bowed down and his skin like a thin parchment over his bones - his gaze as dead and lifeless as a doll's painted eyes. 

"Fine. Whatever, I'm a drunk, who cares? It's not going to kill me."

"You sure about that?"

Xander strode into the kitchen - shoved the towel and the tub into the sink and came back to Spike, scooping up the journal and laying on the couch. "Yeah, I'm so fucking sure it'd make you laugh. Right now, though, you need a shower. You stink - again. And you need to soak your foot some more or it really _will_ rot off."

"Oh _God_." Spike rubbed his hand over his face, soft scrape of bristles across callused palm. "I fucking hate this, I _hate_ it, I just want -"

Xander crouched down beside Spike, putting a hand tentatively on his shoulder. "You'll feel better when you're clean. Clean clothes. I'll even - I'll help you cook up again, okay? You look like shit."

"Yeah? No - fuck." Spike winced as Xander got an arm under him - hauled him upright and got him moving toward the bathroom.

 _He doesn't weigh a fucking thing,_ Xander thought and it hurt, to realize that.

"Harris, you still owe me -"

"No I don't. You went into segue-land and forgot all about the journal." Spike looked for a moment as if he would argue but then he nodded tiredly and Xander sighed. "Pay tomorrow, okay? Enough fucking gut-spilling moments for one night."

"Wanker," Spike muttered, but he let Xander half-carry him to the bathroom. Let Xander fuss around with the water temperature and towels and put one hand on Xander's shoulder, one on the sink while Xander worked the damp, filthy jeans off him. While Spike leaned on the wall of the shower, face turned up to the spray, Xander shoved his stuff into the hamper and dug out sweats and a thermal and a washed-soft flannel, faded blue and grey and white. 

_Invalid's clothes. Fuck. He's never getting better...._

Spike was on the floor of the shower, mostly passed out, when Xander came back, but Xander was okay with that. He'd bathed bodies so debilitated by dysentery and malnutrition they'd been walking skeletons - bodies in the final stages of AIDS. He knew the tricks - he knew the easiest ways. He knew the feeling of death under his fingertips, and it made his stomach curdle tight inside him. "I've got you, Spike, just lean on me…."

When Spike was tucked up onto the couch, throw over his body and a pillow under his head, Xander swept up the broken glass and carried various cups and bottles to the kitchen. Cleaned up and did some laundry and took his own shower. It was almost three in morning but Xander wasn't tired. He sat down with a hoarded bottle of gin - left over from some God-awful party or other - and drank, and re-read the journal and _tried_ to find that elusive pattern. Tried until dawn, and fell asleep over a weirdly beautiful sketch of a dead woman, her throat torn and open like wings, her eyes smudged jade.

The next day was...blurry. Spike used up the last two foil packets, and then the one remaining Demerol and resorted to Xander's Oxycontin and the Jack that Xander had delivered. Xander went back to tequila and watched Spike drift in and out of consciousness - read the journal until Xander was sick of it. He got another fire going in the porcelain-blue of twilight and draped himself over the couch next to Spike, who was staring at the muted TV, his foot back in the tub of hot water and salt.

"I know what it is," Xander half-whispered, leaning close to Spike. "Your journal. I know what it is." Spike lifted a bottle to his lips and drank - rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at Xander with dazed, bloodshot eyes.

"Figured it out, then? Good...good on you, H-Harris."

"It's a...it's like a map. X marks the spot," Xander said, and giggled.

"S'right. _Treasure_ map. An'...you're X. Know what the - what the treasure _is_?"

Xander contemplated the bottom of the tequila bottle for a moment. "Pharmaceuticals?" he guessed, and Spike broke into snorting, wheezing laughter.

"You git. No, no. The treasure is... _Dru_."

"Drew. Drew what? Like a picture that...that....some famous - picture-making guy drew?"

"Bloody - h-hell, Harris! No, Dru. _Drusilla_. She's the treasure."

"Oh." Xander reached for a bag of cheese popcorn but his hand stopped halfway there. "You mean - crazy, scary, thinks I'm a catch, killed a Slayer Dru? _Your_ Dru."

"My Dru, yeah." Spike's voice was thick with narcotics and memory and he closed his eyes, smiling. "My girl Dru. She's coming here. Been - tracking her. Watching the papers and...keepin' my ear to the ground. Underground. Gonna be here _soon_."

"How soon?" Xander asked, cold sobriety lancing through his warm cocoon of alcohol.

"Halloween. That's when she'll be here."

Xander leaned back again, watching Spike stretch to put his bottle on the floor - shift and settle, wincing a little. Shaking even now, when his blood stream all but oozed with drugs. "That's tonight, Spike."

Spike was humming something under his breath and he nodded along to the tempo of it. "Yeah. Tonight. Need t'get dressed. Can't greet her in these bloody...track pants."

"Fuck," Xander whispered. But he didn't get up. Didn't move. Dru couldn’t come in and...it didn't matter, anyway. She couldn't come in, they were... _Spike_ was...safe. 

_Why does he want to see her? If she - fuck, if she does...anything to him he'll lose his soul...if he still has...Jesus, what if -?_

"Spike, you're still soul-boy, aren't you?"

"Suppose so," Spike said, obviously not thinking about it. Making lazy circles in his thighs with his fingertips; digging in every now and again as a tremor went through him. "Don't suppose the sodding Powers took that away."

"Can't you tell?"

"Not when I'm fucked up," Spike said, and actually laughed. Rusty croak of sound that made Xander cringe a little. "An' I've been mostly fucked up for the last three years. I can't...feel it." He frowned then, lifting his head off the back of the couch.- put one hand on his chest, over his heart. "Can't feel much of anything, really." He sat still, staring down at his hand. Tapped his fingers over his breastbone for a moment. "S'why I do it, really." He turned his head in a funny little lock-slip-lock motion, as if the underlying armature of spine and neck were abrading away. Rusting and creaking and winding down. His eyes caught the fading light from the window oddly and glimmered. Chlorine-blue, pupils blown wide. His gaze made Xander draw back.

"That why you do it, mate? That why you're livin' on take away and finest kind?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Xander muttered, and Spike's fingers - ice cold and thin like long-buried bones, locked around his wrist and squeezed.

"You owe me, Harris. 'Fess up, now - tell Spike aaall about it."

Xander flinched away from his touch - lifted the bottle in his hand and took a long drink. The tequila didn't even burn, anymore. "Yeah, okay. Andrew told you I went to Africa, right?"

Spike nodded, picking up his bottle again and swirling the Jack in it in a slow circle. "Said you sent him a fish. What in hell'd you do that for?"

"It was a joke," Xander said, slumping down a little further, bare feet stretching out toward the fireplace. "Anyway, I got hurt over there a couple times. Got jumped by some soldiers, got shot...random, uh, stuff."

"The hazards of being a do-gooder who won't keep his nose out," Spike said, nodding.

"I was finding _Slayers_ , Spike. Kind of important."

"I should sodding well hope so, since it was Red's mojo sent the poor bitches round the twist in the first place."

"I think you're the only ones that got a crazy Slayer," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed.

"I think we're the only ones that _stopped_ one. Cold comfort, believe me." 

Xander watched Spike rub his wrist, circling his fingers around bones and tendons and too-pale skin. "Anyway...I got kind of sick of the whole hospital routine. So when I was in Moscow for this...Council thing, I found a witch. Told her I wanted something that would keep me safe."

"Something wrong with your own personal witch?" Spike asked, and Xander shrugged.

"I didn't want to hear the 'come home' speech again. Every time I got hurt, Willow and Buffy tried to talk me out of working. Wanted me to do...desk stuff. And I couldn't...."

"Couldn't give it up, yeah? Excitement, danger -"

"Watching my first boyfriend get torn to pieces by vampires. Yeah, it was just like Indiana Jones." Xander tipped the tequila bottle up, swallowing the last few inches and then coughing when a swallow went down wrong. 

Spike grinned crookedly at him. "Amazing, isn't it, how life continues to kick you in the goolies when you least expect it. So - witch and...boyfriend, Harris?"

"Yeah, boyfriend. Deal and move on." Spike made a _tsk_ sort of sound that Xander totally ignored. "Witch. Moscow. Fucking cold. I told her I was sick of getting hurt. Was tired of everybody worrying about me. I told her...I didn't want to be so fucking vulnerable anymore. And she said she could fix it. And she did."

Spike tapped his fingers along the neck of the bottle, _one two three_ over and over. Staring at Xander.

"What?"

"Oh, bloody hell! That's not the way to tell a bloody story, Harris! What the fuck happened with your eye? I _saw_ it go."

"And now it's back. Having one eye made me vulnerable. It - grew back." Xander shuddered, remembering in a sickly flash the swift, painful growth - the pressure and crack of muscle and bone rearranging around the new ( _foreign_ ) thing. "I screwed up my hip in Bosnia and that's better, too. Had a pin in there - it worked its way out." Xander still had it, in a drawer in his desk downstairs. Shiny steel pin that had taken four days to bore through him.

"So...." Spike looked a little confused. "You can't get hurt so you're drinkin' yourself to death?"

" _No_. No. You don'.t..." Xander sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped tightly together. "I can't _die_ , Spike. I jumped off a fucking building. I had to lay in the dirt in this empty lot for a fucking hour while my bones healed up enough so I could walk." An hour of grinding, screaming pain as shattered bones had knit themselves, slivers working through muscle and then the muscle itself having to grow again. That had been the last try.

"Sounds like a vampire, that. You sure you're not -?"

"I'm not." 

"You're still not making any sense, Harris. You're immortal. There's no bad there."

"Oh, there's bad, all right." Xander picked at a ragged nail, glancing over at Spike. Spike looked pretty pissed off. In a loopy sort of way. "I really _can't_ die, Spike. Even a vampire - sunlight or a stake - chop your head off - you're dead. But nothing.... _Nothing_ can touch me. And I've fucking tried everything."

"Yeah? More than just the dry dive?" Spike took a drink and sniffed, huddling a little into the couch. "Water's gone cold," he said, wiggling his foot. 

Xander sighed and slid off the couch. "Every fucking thing you can imagine. Walked into a burning building once. Jesus...." Xander slid the tub of water out from under Spike's dripping foot. He swathed it in a towel and inspected the cut. It was still too open for Xander's liking, but the redness - the oozing infection - seemed less. He wrapped the towel around and around and tucked the edges in and then knelt there, looking up at Spike. "That made me think of you, you know?

Spike pulled the throw down off the back of the couch and settled it clumsily over his chest and lap. "It did?"

"Yeah. That was probably what it was like for you, in Sunnydale. When you...died."

Spike shuddered, pulling the throw up a little higher. "Wouldn't wish that on anybody, mate. That was...."

"That sucked. Plus, all my clothes burned off. I had to sneak out naked and all fucking...crispy and get to my car without anybody seeing." And get home without being arrested. He'd stood in the bathroom afterward, just staring in the mirror. Watching his bald, blackened skin curl and come away in bits, new skin pushing up from underneath. Pale and delicate as a baby's skin, and just as perfect. Xander scrubbed his palms on his thighs - looked over at the fire, watching the flames dance - watching the embers scintillate in the heat. 

"Still don't see -"

"If nothing can kill me.... _Jesus_ , Spike! Think about it. What if a Stephen King happened tomorrow - that bird flu or whatever?" Xander pushed himself to his feet - paced over to the fireplace, feeling cold himself now. Feeling a little sick from remembering. He leaned on the mantle, staring at the fire. "What if - what if somebody over in the Middle East gets some damn plutonium and gets the bomb?" He turned around, back to the fire, staring hard at Spike. "And then everybody's dead from radiation sickness and - and nuclear winter and all that and there's _me_ , still wandering around like the world's biggest fucking cockroach!"

"Don't go all Kafka on me, Harris - can't stand that shite."

Xander laughed shortly, rubbing his hands back through his hair. " _What_? I don't even know what you're talking about. Spike, do you _get_ what I'm saying?"

Spike turned his bottle up and drained the last of the whiskey - coughed once, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Yeah, I get what you're saying. You're saying you can't die and you can't be hurt or fucking maimed or - or kill yourself drinking or shooting up or bloody _anything_. And you're fucking _sad_ about it. That about right?"

"Oh, you're such an asshole," Xander muttered. He folded gracelessly to the floor in front of the fireplace, moodily poking the coals with a long piece of wood. "Yeah, great, if my flight goes down, I'll live. After I live through whatever fucked-up things happen to bodies that fall fifty thousand feet through the air. And...." Xander poked the fire a little harder - watched a chunk of wood crumble into pieces, the edges glowing a deep, sullen red. "Everybody _else_ is gonna be dead."

" _That_ is the meat of the matter, isn't it, Harris? That everybody else is going to be dead...eventually."

Xander glanced up at Spike and Spike grinned. It was like looking at a death's head, and Xander shivered and looked away - back to the fire. "Yeah. And even if I'm...so fucking lonely, or - or crazy or the last fucking guy on Earth... I won't be able to die."

"Well, too bloody bad for you," Spike muttered, and Xander felt the surge of rage and frustration come up through him like fire - like a bubble of acid. He took a step toward Spike, fist's clenching... And then it faded. Like it always did. Receded like a tide, leaving nothing but blank sand behind. Spike squinted up at him. "Thought you were gonna hit me, Harris."

"Thought I was too. I _wanted_ to." Xander flopped back onto the couch, squeezing his eyes shut. "But it just...goes away."

"It does?"

"All of it does. Anything too...extreme, it just...goes away."

There was a long silence from Spike, then he shifted a little on the couch and his cold fingers patted carefully - hesitantly - at Xander's. "Guess that'd make you vulnerable, too, yeah?"

Xander curled his hand a little, catching Spike's fingers between his own. "Yeah. Guess it would."

Drusilla arrived fifteen minutes before midnight, appearing in front of them like a ghost. Dressed in form-fitting red, the skirt smooth to her knees, she looked like some high-dollar lawyer until you saw her eyes. Then you knew she was something else entirely. Xander just stared at her while Spike woke with a little gasp, jerking upright.

"Trick or treat," she whispered.

"You weren't invited in," Xander said dully and she smiled a slow, sly smile at him.

"No need for an invitation into _this_ house." She tilted her head at him, cat's eyes green-gold in the firelight, a curl of dark hair sliding over her shoulder. "I remember you." She looked at him from top to toes, her gaze almost tangible - caressing. "Oh, you've changed, you have. Shed your skin a few times."

"Dru?" Spike's voice was shaky - hoarse and breathy and Dru turned to look at him, her face crumpling into something like sorrow.

"Ooh, Spike. Sweet Spike...." She flowed forward - folded to her knees, her hands reaching out and cupping Spike's face. Blood-red nails against his white skin and Xander bit his lip, _hard_. But he couldn't move.

 _What if she...can she turn him again? He'll be here.... God. I'm a selfish fucking bastard, he'll lose his soul._

"Dru, I've been - following you. Trying to - trying to find -" Spike's hands skipped up her arms - latched onto her wrists and held on. Fine tremors shuddering through him, making his voice skip and catch.

"Shhh, love. I know. I could feel you, looking, couldn't I? I talked to Daddy, you know." Her thumb smoothed over Spike's lower lip and his eyes fluttered - opened wide and locked on her face.

"You did? When - when did -"

"Oh, I don't remember. Nights and moons and hunts ago." Drusilla looked over at Xander - leaned in a little closer to Spike, her voice husking down into a near whisper. "Daddy is _ever_ so much easier to catch now that he's all souled. He told me - everything."

"God...Dru, please, I -"

"Shhh." Dru shushed Spike again - leaned forward more and dropped a light kiss on to his lips. "I know, love. You're like Sir Galahad, aren't you? Sent out into the world, told to find the Grail.... And now you've found it, and I'm your Joseph, aren't I? Laying you to your rest after your long journey."

Spike's eyes were glimmering in the firelight and his chest was hitching and falling in uneven, half-strangled breathes. " _Yes_. Yes, Dru - please, I can't - they.... It _hurt_ , Dru. Hurt so fucking much and it won't stop, it won't stop...."

"I know, I know." Dru leaned her forehead on Spike's, her eyes closing, and Spike's did the same. His lashes were wet. "You screamed into the ether, love - shook the stars, rattled the bones.... " Dru twisted easily out of his grasp and rose, smooth column of scarlet and black. "I've been searching too, Spike and I've found it."

"What did you find, love?" Spike was leaning forward, his gaze locked onto Dru and Xander ground his fingers together, fisting them into a knot of bone and flesh. Feeling his heart jump and skitter in his chest like a trapped bird.

Drusilla turned on one foot, curving spine and arms and leg like a dancer, seeming to float in the dim, golden air. Xander couldn't take his eyes off her. She bowed toward the fire - swayed to the far-left window and pointed out. The new moon was there, just at the edge of the sky. Slender quicksilver smile, like a razor. "New moon, Spike. Everything growing - changing - becoming. Just like you. I found my way - threaded the maze. I can bring you back, good Sir Knight. Back from your slow death. Back to the dark, out of the light."

"Thank Christ," Spike whispered. Spike's face was - _glowing_ , somehow. Transformed by Dru's words - by her very presence. Lit from inside as hope and happiness kindled up in him. 

_God, fuck, he looks...like himself, like...like he should look.... No, no…._

Xander reached out and grabbed his wrist, squeezing it hard enough to make Spike flinch. " _Spike_ \- you can't, you'll be - just a monster again." 

_Doesn't matter, I am too. This shouldn't hurt. Doesn't this make me vulnerable? Why does this fucking hurt?_

"Don't be a sodding idiot, Harris! Of course I can, and I bloody well am."

"I can - she can't kill me, Spike," Xander said, desperation making his voice harsh. "I can - stop her."

Spike snarled, jerking his wrist out of Xander's grasp. "You could fucking try. You think healing up from your jump or your fire was bad? What she could do to you would be ten times worse."

Dru turned suddenly from the window, clapping her hands sharply and startling them both. "Boys, enough. We have to wait just a little longer. Can't be getting up to mischief on Halloween." She looked toward the stairs and smiled, nodding. "But tomorrow.... All Souls. We'll be making you whole again, Spike. Fixing all the hurts." Three vampires dressed mostly in black materialized from the gloom, glitter of gold and the soft shush of shoe leather. A delicate blonde woman, a slender boy with dreadlocks and earth-dark skin and a lion of a man, with broad shoulders and ash-gold hair fanned like a mane over his shoulders.

Xander just stared at them - watched Drusilla all but skip to the couch and pull Spike close - whisper into his ear. Telling him what they were going to do - telling him what was going to happen. And Spike slipped his arm around Dru's waist and leaned into her and closed his eyes. Relaxing into her hold and sighing softly and Xander clutched at the rags of his outrage - his fear - his bitterness.

But they slipped away from him, leaving him with nothing at all.

"So why haven't your pals fixed you all up, then?" Spike asked, watching the lion-vampire fiddle with the lighter and spoon. It seemed Dru came bearing all _kinds_ of gifts.

"They don't know," Xander said on a sigh, and Spike shot him an astonished look.

"Don't _know_? C'mon, Harris, you can't make me believe you didn't go running."

"Fuck you. I _didn't_ 'go running'. I...well, about a year after it all happened, I told Giles. I told him he couldn't tell the girls. They didn't need to know."

"And Red'd have your balls, wouldn't she." Spike licked his lips, watching the other vamp approach. Leaning forward and quivering like a dog on a leash, just waiting to be let free.

"I just - didn't... I didn't _care_ , okay? It'd be this big...to do and...and I didn't...." Xander shook his head, looking down - looking away. Listening and knowing _exactly_ what was going on. After a minute the other vamp moved away - heading downstairs where Dru and the other two were setting up something. Spell, Dru had said. All part of the 'cure'. 

" _Couldn't_ care, you mean," Spike said, his voice already lower - slower. 

Xander picked at a callus on his palm, worrying the thick flesh. "I was - afraid I'd talk to them and just...feel nothing. So I just avoid them, mostly." 

_And they're busy. Busy, busy girls. Only heard from them a few times, anyway...doesn't matter…._

"I _remember_ what it feels like, to love them. I don't wanna...find out I really _don't_ anymore."

"Coward," Spike muttered, and Xander jerked around to face him, incredulous.

"You're kidding, right? You get human and you can't deal with fucking - _bodily functions_ and _I'm_ the coward? Fuck you, Spike!"

"Not remotely the bloody same, Harris." Spike seemed to be fighting the drug - or maybe it wasn't working so good for him anymore. "I'm not _supposed_ to be this way. I'm a fucking demon that's been - been locked into a fucking _cage_. Foul, rotting cage...." Spike looked down at himself with a grimace of disgust and Xander wanted to hit him.

"Bullshit, that's so much -"

"It's _not_. Red could undo that spell - think she couldn't? But you're too sodding embarrassed to admit you did it, so you just - _huddle_ here. Hide from the bloody world and try to think of the next best way to off yourself."

"No she _can't_ ," Xander snapped. He pushed himself off the couch and strode over to the right-hand window. Stood there, staring out at the lights of the city. The red and white smears of head and tail lights on the highway and the lone, drifting glimmer of a barge on the river. "Giles - told her. He didn't say it was me, just...someone. They worked on it for like, six months. She couldn't crack it."

"Doesn't mean she wouldn't. -"

"She _won't_. Spike -" Xander turned around and then just leaned on the window, hip propped on the sill. He was so fucking...tired. Just tired. 

_Imagine how tired you'll be in a hundred years. In a thousand…._

"I didn't invite Dru in. She just _came_ in. I'm not...right. Not anymore."

Spike was staring at him, eyes half closed and his eyes themselves sunk in bruised-looking flesh. Shadowed and still, already miles and molecules away. "S'that why you...why you hid -" Spike gestured at his face and Xander nodded.

"Giles knows but - I mean, there'd be questions for sure if anybody else did. They'd wanna come _see_...like some kind of fucking...freak show. I didn't know if you'd tell so...." He shrugged. Yeah, it sounded stupid, even in his own head. But it was just one more _thing_. One more too-obvious sign of his own incredible stupidity. Lying was so much easier, anyway.

"Ignorant sodding bastard," Spike muttered, and his eyes fluttered closed. He looked like a hard-used doll, lying there. Jumble of too-thin limbs and ragged hair and Xander almost walked over to him - almost tugged the throw up around him and smoothed it over his chest. 

Almost.

Instead, he went into the kitchen and took the last bottle of tequila out of the liquor store bag and cracked the seal. 

_Comfort in routine. She's gonna kill him in my fucking downstairs living room. Undo whatever the Powers did._

Xander took a long, burning gulp and coughed. There was a sharp _crack_ from downstairs and a rumble of soft laughter, and he shuddered all over. 

_God, she's gonna take his **soul**. He fought for that, he - won it. Wanted it. What the fuck am I gonna do?_

He lifted the bottle to his lips, chill glass just touching his skin. "Take another drink, I guess," he murmured. It seemed like the best solution.

"I'm not gonna be part of this, Spike," Xander snapped, and Spike looked like he wanted to put his fist through the wall - or Xander's face.

"Well, too bloody bad! Dru said you have to, and you can either come down all quiet like, or she can have her fucking Sabertooth clone drag you." Spike grimaced and shifted, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. "She really doesn't give a flying fuck, mate, but I'm trying to give you some dignity, here."

" _Dignity_? Says the man who stumbled around bare-ass naked in my hotel room."

"Was fucking high, you moron. It kind of cancels out shite like that."

"I can see why you like it so much, then."

"Oh, _bloody_ hell!" Spike half-hopped two steps toward the stairs and Xander turned away from him, arms crossed, staring into the fire. Ignoring him. "Oi, you! Sabertooth! Shift your arse and get up here. Harris needs some bloody motivation."

Xander turned sharply, glaring at Spike. "Fuck you, Spike! I am _not_ going down there!" He watched, furious, as the big, blond vampire trotted up the stairs and strode across the floor. He came to a stop much, _much_ too close to Xander, arms crossed and a fangy grin on his face. "Fuck off."

"The lady says get you," Sabertooth said, all gleeful anticipation. He twisted his fist in Xander's Henley shirt and turned around - dragged him toward the stairs. Xander landed two good punches and then Sabertooth turned around and punched back.

" _Ow_!" Xander tried a knee to the groin and Sabertooth punched him again and then it was all a little confused and - floaty. Or flying. Or something. All Xander knew for sure was that he landed hard.

"Glad you could join us," Spike said, sitting cross legged in what looked like the middle of a Spirograph design. The blonde vampire was just finishing up, popping the tourniquet off Spike's arm and bundling the works away. Spike's back arched and he groaned softly, lips curling back from his teeth in a rictus smile.

Xander concentrated on the floor. 

_She carved that into my fucking floor. Take me forever to sand that out, Jesus…._

"Oh, fuck _off_ , Spike! Look what she did to my floor!"

"Boys - no fighting." Drusilla ghosted in from somewhere, soundless on bare feet. Her hair loose and curled around her shoulders, her eyes gleaming in the light of dozens of candles. "It's the night of All Soul's. We must pray for all those sad ghosts trapped in Purgatory." She had a rosary in her fingers, wound loosely around and around and Xander realized with a grimace it was made of little bones.

"Drusilla...." It was weird, saying her name. As if he knew her - as if she was someone to him. "I - I really don't think you need me here -"

"Of course we do, sweet." Dru made a little gesture and Sabertooth was suddenly kneeling behind Xander, yanking his arms back hard and - shit. Xander remembered handcuffs all too well. He twisted, useless attempt to free himself.

"Hey! What the fuck -" Sabertooth-vamp put his hand over Xander's mouth, pinching hard. His skin smelled like smoke and spice from the candles - like earth, and Xander tried to wrench away. It was like fighting a statue. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck! Knew this would go bad, knew this was a bad fucking idea. Terrible fucking idea - ow! God damnit -_

"Hush, kitten, hush, hush." Dru glided across the design, her fingertips trailing lightly over Spike's hair as she passed him. She stood over Xander, the rosary clutched in both her hands. The cross on it was stained with blood and it was bound together with what looked like some sort of dried sinew. Xander sat frozen, flexing his wrists. Sabertooth's hand was digging in painfully around his bicep, a grip as hard and cold as a machine's. "This cure we've found - this spell we'll work... It's going to be a hard thing." She looked over her shoulder at Spike, who was keeling over just a little, his eyes half-shut. He was holding the journal again, stroking the worn cover. 

Dru leaned down, her face close to Xander's and he tried reflexively to lean back. Sabertooth shook him. "It's going to wring his bones like a mangle, kitten. It's going to _hurt_ , oh so much. He'll need fresh blood, when he wakes. And your blood...." Dru's hand reached and touched Xander's forehead - stroked back through his hair, the bones of the rosary swaying against his lashes - his eyelid. "Your blood will be so _rich_. So special. Just what he'll need." 

Drusilla's scent was of roses, and burning, and musk, and Xander shuddered, jerking against the hold on his jaw - against the cuffs. Feeling his heart pound harder - faster. Panicky rhythm that made him dizzy as he panted through his nose. 

_No, no, no! What if they turn me - can they turn me? God - blood on the hoof for Spike and his crazy-assed girlfriend - why the fuck is my life so fucked up?_

"You'll be... a'right, Harriss" Spike slurred, and Xander glared at him as Dru walked away. "Can't kill you, can I?" He laughed, rusty and strange, and then Dru was kneeling down in front of him, touching his lips - holding a cup to them and Spike was drinking, his hands lightly over hers.

"Guess you're about the best little human around," Sabertooth murmured, cool breath on the back of Xander's neck. "Can't kill you - got magic in your blood I can smell from a hundred feet. Can just drain you whenever we want...." Xander whipped his head back sharply, hoping to catch Sabertooth in the forehead but the vampire laughed softly, dodging easily and pinching Xander's jaw a little harder - hard enough to make Xander go instantly still. "Don't piss me off, _kitten_. I'll pull your claws."

"Shhhh,..." Dru said. She set the cup aside and laid her hand flat on the journal that was in Spike's lap. "You won't need this anymore, Sir Galahad," she said, and Spike blinked sleepily, looking down at the book then back up to Dru in a bewildered sort of way.

"Tried to find you, love. I did. I tried - followed all the c-clues...never gave up, Dru, I never...."

"I know you didn't. I could feel you, following me. Like a bee just behind me, drone and hum. I left you a trail of honey-blood, my Spike...."

"Yours," Spike murmured, and then he was slumping over, eyes going shut and Dru caught him - held him easily.

"Oh, yes, all mine, no matter _what_ Daddy might say. Always mine." Dru's features shifted with a soft _crunch_ , and Xander tried to look away - tried to get free. He couldn't do either. He watched as Dru licked a slow path from Spike's collarbone to just below his ear. Her gold-glimmering gaze found Xander's and she smiled at him. Opened her mouth and sank her fangs into Spike's throat and Xander finally closed his eyes. 

He couldn't keep them closed, though. Sooner than he expected, he could hear Dru moving - speaking - and then her voice dropping into a low, sing-song chant. Hissing out the spell in strange, sibilant words that seemed to itch over Xander's skin. Sabertooth let him go, shoving him back into a wall and Xander watched him walk over behind Dru and stand there, arms crossed, scowling. Dru was bleeding from a cut on her arm, gesturing with a small knife and the cup Spike had drained, blood drops spattering over the floor. The blonde girl-vamp and dreadlock vamp were standing opposite Dru, just outside the edges of the design. A strange, flickering light was swirling in slowly from the corners of the room - pale illumination that crept along the lines of the design and twined around Spike, slipping under him and over him. Into his mouth and nostrils and ears, under his shut lids. His body twitched and rippled as if a million ants were crawling under his skin and it was making Xander feel sick. 

_Fuck, just get it over with, get it done, this is...fucking horrible...._

Xander twitched against the wall, rubbing his shoulders and the back of his head across the wood. Trying to make the plucking, prickling feeling of the magic _stop_. He could feel his hair lifting off his head - his clothing bunching and clinging as static electricity built and built, going higher as Dru's voice did.

There was a sudden _snap_ of energy and a popping, crackling fire shot out from Spike and raced across every line of the design - flared and grew and then _leapt_ , arc of lightning that arrowed into the blonde and the dreadlocked vampire - into Sabertooth as Dru deftly twisted aside. All three vampires screamed in unison, pinned to the air by the flickering fire. The fire sank into them and lit them from the inside, brighter and brighter until they were pillars of flame banded by the darker stripes of bone. 

With a roar the light _sank_ \- pulled itself back and in and down and the vampires followed it, dissolving into dust and ash and darkness, streaming along the fire's path. Melting into nothing as the fire swarmed over Spike, lifting him - turning him. And Spike's mouth opened and he screamed.

It took too long - way too fucking long - for Spike to stop screaming. The air stank of ozone and burnt bone and ash - charred wood and hair and blood, and Xander fought to keep from throwing up all the tequila he'd drunk. And every meal for the last three days.

Spike's voice cut off abruptly, the raw, choking scream going silent and leaving Xander's ears ringing. Dru stood at the edge of the design, her toes just beyond the blackened lines. She was white - shaking - stained with ashes and blood, her gaze fixed on Spike. Xander pushed against the wall, pushing himself up until he was standing. His wrists ached from the clasp of the handcuffs.

"Spike?"

"Hush, boy. Hush now...let him -" 

Spike was lying, twisted and slightly smoking, in the center of the design. Motionless for long moments and then he moved. Took in a hard, gasping breath, jack-knifing upright. His clothes were singed and torn, hanging off him and he scrabbled at the hoodie and t-shirt, tearing them free. Underneath, his skin was smooth as cream, shining like bone in the shifting light of the guttering candles. He took another breath, eyes wide, and then caught sight of Drusilla. Instantly his face shifted and Dru smiled at him, holding out her hand. Crooning to him as if he were a gun-shy dog.

_Not a dog anymore. Fucking tiger...burning bright...what the hell is that? Have to ask Spike, he'd know…._

Xander stifled the hysterical giggle that threatened to well up and burst out of him. Asking Spike - anything - was going to be.... 

_Fucking joke. He's not - there anymore. He's gone, just a monster now, no soul and no.... **him**. Nothing._

"Come on, love - come here to me. You must come here to me, pretty thing...." Drusilla took a step back and Spike coiled upward, standing so easily it made Xander blink. The sweats slid down, off Spike's hips and over his feet and Spike kicked them away - shredded the socks off his feet and stood there, his head tipping one way and then another as he watched Dru. Mouth a little open as if he were drawing in breath and scent. Then he stepped forward and _walked_. No limp, no hesitation. Remade.

As he stepped over the edge of the design it flared to life behind him - flared up bright and then winked out, leaving nothing but a rough circle of scorched wood. Spike didn't even seem to notice, every bit of his attention focused on Dru. Xander tried not to breathe - tried to make his heart pound a little slower and quieter, for fuck's sake, hoping Spike wouldn't notice him. Wouldn't _see_ him at all.

"Dru...ssilla...." Spike whispered, and Dru seemed to shiver all over. She let the cup and knife fall to the floor - reached out to Spike and met his hands as they reached for her. Spike pulled her close, his arms wrapping around her, his eyes going shut as he leaned there with her, forehead to forehead. Breathing softly, deliberately.

Then he opened his eyes and Xander froze, pinned under that brass-gold stare.

"Spike, don't, don't -"

"Look what mummy's got for your tea, Spike. Something fresh and good to make you strong."

"How you look after me," Spike rumbled, nuzzling into Dru's hair for a moment. Then he slipped away from her and toward Xander, his head down, his mouth twisting up into a sly sort of smile. Muscles rolling under his skin, nothing but pure predator in that lion-deadly gaze. 

Xander tried to slide away, back to the wall, his knuckles scraping along the plaster. "Spike - _don't_. I'm - we're -." 

_Fuck. We're not friends - we're not even comrades. Jesus...Christ…._

"Do you - don't you remember me, Spike?" The jamb of one of the downstairs bedroom doors scraped Xander's wrist and he looked frantically over his shoulder at the closed door, trying to find the doorknob.

Spike's hand, cool and heavy, slid over his shoulder and Xander jumped, banging wrist, elbow and head against the wood. "Course I remember you, Harris...." Spike's hand cupped Xander's jaw, turning his head - pressing on the bruises Sabertooth had made. Bruises that would be gone in an hour. Spike was smiling still, fangs glinting ivory-white, his hair still a mess of cork-screwed dreads and lank curls. He stank of blood and salt and something - else. Something dark. 

"You're the one can't die, no matter what," Spike murmured, and his lips touched Xander's throat. His tongue did, cool and wet, and the prickle of fangs was like a nettle being touched.

Xander couldn't move back - couldn't move at _all_ \- and he heard his breath going high and panting as his heart pounded behind his breastbone, thudding beats that hurt. "Spike - wait, wait! C'mon, _please_ -"

"Won't hurt you, Xander. Won't hurt at all," Spike whispered, his arms sliding around Xander like a snake - his body pressing, cool and snake-heavy and boneless. Pressing Xander tight to the door. 

Spike was right, it didn't hurt at all. Until it did.

"Kitty, kitty, kitty... Wake up, little kitty..." Something cool and wet, on his face - his lips - and Xander jerked away, gasping. Drusilla leaned over him, her wet hair dripping water onto his face. "Do you want a nice bowl of milk, kitty-kitty?"

"Don't," Xander said. Tried to say. His mouth was dry and his shoulders and chest ached - a bone-deep throb of muscles strained too long in one position. His wrists inside the cuffs were killing him - they felt raw, like they were bleeding, although he was pretty sure Dru or Spike would have said something. _Done_...something. Xander shuddered. Shuddered again when Dru's fingers slid down his cheek and cupped his jaw - made him look up. 

"Spike says you have to eat, kitty. I thought bread and milk but Spike says kitties like meat."

"Spike can go fuck himself and you can, too," Xander grated out. His throat was raw and his voice was hoarse.

_God, oh God, just go the fuck away, go away and leave me alone, leave me alone, I don't **care** -_

"Don't use that sort of language in front of my girl," Spike said, sliding in from nowhere, water in silver trails over his chest. He took a lot of baths.

"Fuck off," Xander muttered, and Spike reached down and hauled Xander up by his shirt-front, tearing it a little more. Jerking Xander much, much too close to naked vampire bodies.

"Don't be a smart-ass, Xander," Spike purred, his lips just brushing Xander's ear. He pushed at Xander's hair with his nose, nuzzling and snuffling a little, moving _down_ and Xander tried to jerk away. "Stand still."

Dru pressed up against Xander's front, her arms going around his waist. Her hands, warmed from the water, circled Xander's wrists and squeezed hard. Xander froze, panting. "Don't make Spike angry, kitty." Dru's eyes glittered in the candle light, a deep, velvety brown. "You know what happens."

"I - know." _That_ knowledge made Xander shiver all over, his breath coming out in a shocky little gasp. "Spike, just - _don't_ , okay? Just -"

"Be quiet, little kitty, or I'll have to muzzle you." Spike's eyes were bright with sardonic amusement and Xander looked away into the golden haze of candles and the low, slanting light of sunset. Tried hard not to feel Spike's naked body pressed solidly against him from shoulder to thigh. Tried not to feel Dru's lips, kissing their way slowly over his collarbone to her 'favorite' spot. 

_Can't take this, can't do this...so fucking stupid, so fucking - **God** , no, no, no -_

" _No_ ," Xander whispered, but their fangs sank in anyway, twin sets of ivory needles. The rush - the sudden, heart-tripping _heat_ of it, made him moan softly, and he barely noticed when they finished. When Dru and then Spike pulled away and eased him back down onto the floor. Spike's fingers were at his lips, pressing something between them and Xander felt the pill roll onto his tongue - swallowed the tequila that followed. It was swallow or choke, and Xander didn't want to cough, just now. Not the way his ribs were aching. 

Xander rolled onto his side, wincing at the pressure on his arm. Spike was still crouched right there, his elbows tucked back against his sides and his hands on his knees. "Go 'way, Spike."

"Pretty soon," Spike said. He ran his hands back over his skull, an odd look on his face. Dru had tried to comb his hair out but it had been too matted and they'd ended up clipping it all off. Now Spike's hair was an inch-long brush of light brown. Nothing like his bleached-blond Sunnydale days. Xander thought he looked like a gladiator. 

_The kind that killed the Christians. The crowd'd love him...he'd always draw first blood...send the lions running…._

"Getting better in here." 

Xander jerked a little, startled. He'd managed to almost completely tune Spike out. "Huh?"

"I said, it's getting better. In here." Spike tapped his temple. "They're fading away, those...others. Like they should. Nothing but shades, anyway. Shades and shadows...." Spike ran his hand back over his skull again, slowly. Looking into some middle distance, his eyes dark. "Don't know how she did it, Xander. Don't know how she... _knew_." Spike's focus shortened until he was looking at Xander again, summer-blue eyes dilated with drug - with blood. Like Xander's were, he knew. Xander blinked, sinking toward that half-sleep state they mostly kept him in. 

_Oxycontin and blood-loss, unbeatable combo. Why didn't I think of this before? Jesus, **fight** it -_

"She made it like...it all never happened. My leg...and...." Spike's hand went to his chest, absently rubbing, and Xander shut his eyes. He'd had scars there once. They were gone now, too. 

_Just like his soul. No soul, no...scars. No love._

"No, kitty. We love. Would have thought you'd have learned that by now."

Xander opened his eyes wide, fighting the drug. Spike was looking oddly at him, a little grin on his face. 

"You didn't say that out loud."

"J-Jesus, Spike, wh-what -?"

Spike gestured with his chin toward Dru, who was fastening up the bodice of an old-fashioned looking dress. It was ragged around the hem and the ends of the sleeves. "It's her, you know. Her blood in the spell. Gave me...something."

"So you're...nuts now...too?" Xander asked, sluggish, and Spike laughed softly.

"Nah. Just - a little touched. But it's true, you know. I _ache_ with it, Xander. With love. For her...for - others."

"Don't call me...that."

"Why not?"

"Not mmm...my friend," Xander slurred. His eyelids were too heavy to hold open anymore and he let them close. Let the world - his house - slip away into spangled darkness.

"Dunno what I am," Spike said, his voice slipping sideways into the black. Last sliver of light, blue-white and shimmering. And then Xander sank, and all the light was gone.

When he woke up, he was upstairs. Wrapped in the quilt from his bed, propped on pillows in front of a purring fire. The handcuffs were gone. Xander lay there, staring at the bed of embers under the half-consumed logs. They seemed to ripple with the heat, like a slowly undulating snake. He could feel - he _knew_.... The house was empty. Spike and Dru were gone. The sky through the window was navy and deep violet, the sun only down an hour, at the most. There was a bottle of tequila by him, and he pushed himself slowly up onto his elbow - uncapped it and took a long drink. As he lowered the bottle back to the floor, he saw the bruises around his wrist. Plum, blue - rot-green and sickly yellow. As he stared, the yellow faded and the green yellowed, all of it becoming...lighter. 

Fading. Leaving...nothing. 

Xander swallowed hard but he knew he was going to be sick.

He grabbed Spike's foot-soaking tub - sitting right there next to the bottle - and gagged up tequila and bile until his stomach hurt. He flopped back on the pillows, panting. Feeling tears oozing out from the corners of his eyes and not even caring. Not thinking for even one minute why the tub had been there, or the bottle. 

_Hate you, Spike, you fucker, you **bastard** , you fucking undead God damn monster, why did you...why couldn't you... Fucking hate you._

Over the next five months, Xander managed to keep himself mostly drunk at all times. It wasn't much of an effort. He finished off his Oxycontin, too, and got a refill, but mostly only looked at them. He didn't like the fuzziness. He wanted things to stay...clear. Diamond-bright. Drinking made it all like crystal, with an edge like a razor.

He spent a lot of time staring in the mirror, looking for the scars from Dru's mouth and Spike's. There weren't any, though, and it made him wonder if he'd dreamed it all. Except...there was a circle of scorched wood downstairs in the empty formal dining room, and he'd go and sit in the middle sometimes. Remembering when he was the heart, once.

 _Can't be the heart when you've lost yours. Or maybe I've lost my soul...maybe that's why Drusilla could come right in. Giles said a vamp doesn't need an invite into another demon's...lair. So maybe I'm just a soulless thing now. Sitting in my lair._

Xander laughed softly and stood up, the bottle in his hand thumping on the floor. Flakes of char broke away, sticking to the glass. 

His phone was ringing upstairs - he could hear it. He knew it was Giles. He'd picked up once, back in...January. Something about sending some Slayers - something about him moving on. Something about life. He'd told Giles he really wasn't up to having one, right then. Call back later, maybe.

 _Like in a couple hundred years. Maybe I'll feel like…. Maybe I'll feel, then._

He wasn't sure how despair, bitterness - _grief_ \- weren't a vulnerability. Maybe you could only truly be hurt when you were happy. Maybe the heart-enlarging effects of love and joy and singing on Christmas morning even if the roast beast was gone was the reason your heart shattered when the other shoe...kicked it. 

_You're so fucking drunk...you don't even know…._

"Don't know a bloody thing, do you, Harris?"

"Did I say that out loud?" Xander asked, turning slowly, and Spike smirked at him from the door. 

"What do _you_ think?" Spike asked, and pushed away from the jamb. Sauntered over to Xander and he was _Spike_ again. Not the wreck of bone and skin and bitterness from October - not the too-quiet man who'd ducked his head and stepped aside in the last days of Sunnydale. But the man - _vampire_ \- he'd been years ago, before an invisible choke-chain and a broken heart. This was the Spike who'd promised Buffy that she would die in four days and Xander felt a prickle of fear scuttle up his back.

"I think.... Where's Drusilla?"

Spike's expression altered a little, his amused look fading to something like bewilderment for a moment. "She's off chasing rainbows, she is." Spike stopped just where the charred wood started - scuffed at it with his toe. Xander just stood there, watching him. A little dizzy, a lot exhausted. Sick to death. 

"Got some proper drink, then?" Spike asked, jerking his chin upwards and Xander nodded.

"Got enough to get a vampire drunk," Xander replied, and lifted his own bottle to his lips, gulping. Raw burn and heat and that little flushing _rush_. Close to what it had felt like when....

_Heat, hurt, it all goes away...._

"Missed me, did you?" Spike asked, suddenly much too close and much too _real_ \- lips and eyes and smoldering cigarette right there. 

Xander blinked and took a step back. "You started smoking again."

Spike lifted his cigarette and took a drag, watching Xander. The little smile was back. "Yeah. Bothered me before. Hurt my throat - made me 'bout fucking strangle. Bloody stupid."

"Don't set anything on fire," Xander said, and jerked himself away from that steady - unsteadying - regard. He led Spike upstairs and grabbed a bottle of Jack from the kitchen - tossed it over and went to the fireplace. The April nights were chilly and he'd had a fire burning since November, it seemed. It was almost like having someone there, a fire was. It talked in its own secret language, and Xander found he turned the TV off more and more and just sat, listening to the hissing, popping rush of it.

Now he leaned one shoulder against the stone of the surround and watched Spike prowl from point to point, touching things here and there. A restless cat, dissatisfied, until he found his journal lying in state on the small table under the window. He put the bottle down and touched the cover of the journal with careful fingertips, looking over at Xander finally, that scarred eyebrow going up in a move that was....

_Just like then, hasn't changed...isn't the same…._

"Why'd you keep it?"

Xander shrugged - took another drink. "I dunno. I just.... It was different. 

_It was you. It was my last link with...older things. It's like something Giles would do or Willow, it's…._

"Regret," Spike said softly, and Xander nodded. Regret. Exactly. Spike lifted the journal and undid the bindings on it - began to leaf through it, walking slowly toward Xander. Xander took another drink, watching him. 

Spike shook his head, laughing softly. "This is worse than that bloody idiot Castaneda. What babble." Spike touched a page of words that seemed to have been written in blood. Xander wondered if it had been his own, or someone else's.

"All mine, mate. No worries there." 

"That's really freaking me out, man."

Spike's gaze darted up to Xander's, a flashing glance of amusement and glee. "Doesn't work on everybody. Thank Christ - can you imagine the inane prattle I'd be forced to listen to in clubs? No...." Spike crouched down, leafing to the very end of the journal and staring for a long moment at the sketch of the dead woman. "It only works sometimes." He reached out and settled the journal on the burning logs, balancing it carefully. The tattered edges of the clippings fluttered in the heat and then began to curl and blacken. Spike rubbed his hand on his thigh and stood up.

Xander stared down at the fire - at the journal. At the death-locked stare of the woman, watching her flayed skin and the bright skein of blood under her jaw blacken and crumble. "So - what makes it work?"

"Not sure, really," Spike said. He sent his cigarette butt after the journal and then turned to Xander, toe to toe, nearly touching. "I just know it has to be someone...special."

"Special how?" Xander asked.

"Shut up," Spike whispered. He leaned forward the few inches between them, his eyes going half-lidded and dark. Drawing in a long breath through his mouth, his fingers curling slowly around Xander's wrists. Xander felt the bottle slip out of his hand - bump knee and shin and clunk unharmed to the wooden floor, rolling away. Leaving an arc of liquid behind as it rolled, golden with reflected flame.

It hurt like it had the first time, lying under mosquito netting and a black-haired South African boy, biting his lip until it bled. Evan had stopped instantly, letting out a small sound of distress - waiting while Xander pried his hands open, nails sunk into Evan's skin. Waited for it to be good again.

Spike only pushed harder, his head dipping down and his tongue - cool and agile - slipping along Xander's lip, gathering the blood into his own mouth. Sucking gently while Xander struggled fruitlessly under him and then gave up, panting.

"Sspike -"

"Push against me," Spike murmured, his tongue busy elsewhere now, and Xander pushed, legs trembling. Pushed and gasped in a hard, hitching breath as Spike breached him fully - slid in. Hot rush of cool flesh, the burn going up the backs of Xander's legs and twisting into his belly - plucking at his balls. 

"Christ, that's lovely...." Spike said, breathy whisper in Xander's ear, his forearms under Xander's shoulders, his fingers tight in Xander's hair. Straining his head back, chin to the ceiling and Spike's mouth lapping and nibbling and sucking here, there, _there_.

Xander shuddered, groaning softly - dug his heel into the back of Spike's thigh and pushed, pushed, pushed - lifted his hips and dragged his hands down Spike's back, fingernails catching on every swell of vertebrae. "Spike - Jesus -" Spike's shoulder was right there, curve of skin that glowed in the firelight like mother of pearl. Finer than a human's skin, poreless and perfect, and Xander craned his head down and bit, hard.

" _Fuck_ \- yeah...." Spike's hips jerked forward and Xander's whole body locked tight as he rode the wave of burning, shuddering ache. 

"Just - lemme - Spike, wait -" Xander clawed at Spike's back but Spike only arched like a Halloween tom, his gaze meeting Xander's all pumpkin-gold and feral, lips snarling back from needle-pointed fangs.

"Too late," Spike growled, lifting and pulling and then _pushing_ back in, harder and faster and twist of hips right there, right there, and Xander sucked in oxygen gone rare and bright-edged, keening. There was an oval of red on Spike's perfect shoulder and Xander focused on it - traced the indentations of his teeth and let his hands slide lower - let them cup and then squeeze the dense, flexing muscle.

"Why'd you - c-come back?" Xander asked, and Spike tugged at his hair - pushed Xander's chin up again with a nudge of his cheek.

"Junkie, aren't I? Can't get enough." Spike's voice was amused - slightly breathless - and his fangs slid in easily, two slim wands of burning ice. The fire was white-gold-scarlet in the edges of Xander's vision, dancing and growing as he opened wide - eyes, mouth, thighs - to Spike. As he shuddered, spitted and arched and writhing, to a bone-wringing orgasm. 

When the room blinked back from nuclear-white to saffron-glow and the low murmur of the fire, Spike was still on him - in him. Moving with the slow undulation of a snake, heavy and cool and totally inescapable. Xander's legs were sprawled, bent and heavy and too weak to move. Xander let his head roll to the side as Spike lapped at his throat, thorough cleaning of a mother cat.

"M'not a cat," Spike grumbled.

"What's that?" Xander asked, letting his hand slide off Spike's back and flop limply on the floor. Flopped in the general direction of the slim, silver flask that was slipping out of Spike's coat pocket.

"Mmm? Oh. That's something Dru made up, just for you." Spike shifted, pushing himself up - kneeling back, shifting Xander's hips up onto his thighs. "Hold on, now, Xander. Hold tight."

Xander flexed his hips and thighs, watching Spike's eyes flutter, his head going back. Spike grinned down at him, all curious angles and planes - red between his fangs. "Thought Dru left."

"Eventually," Spike said. He stretched for the flask and Xander sighed, his own eyes closing at the press and rub of Spike's cock on sensitized flesh. "But not before she left me this little...aperitif, you might say."

"I doubt _I'd_ say it."

Spike ignored him - unscrewed the lid and took a delicate sniff. Then he put his hand around the back of Xander's neck and hauled him upright, settling him onto cock and thighs with casual strength. Xander whimpered, bracing his forearms on Spike's shoulders, his head heavy on his neck.

"What the - _fuck_ -"

"Just a little something from her to you. Drink up, now." 

The flask's edge was cool and it tasted of iron and Xander ducked away, grimacing. Spike's fingers dug in on either side of his spine, pinching hard and Xander arched away from the stabbing pain and then froze as Spike shook him a little.

"Don't fucking fight me, Xander. Drink it. Won't hurt you."

Xander batted weakly at the flask - yelped when Spike pinched even harder, everything going blood-red for a moment as needling heat raced down his spine. And through his cock. 

_Fuck, fuck - oh God, that's - fucking sick it's - good, so damn -_

"Always knew you were a kinky bugger," Spike murmured, his voice delighted and a little cracked, and Xander ground their bodies together, gasping for air.

"Don't, just - Spike -"

" _Drink_ it." Spike pushed the flask against Xander's mouth again, tipping it, and fluid spilled out and sluiced into Xander's mouth. Thick and cold and _slippery_ , tasting of vinegar and salt and citrus. Tasting of earth and rot, and Xander tried to gag - tried to spit it out. But Spike's hand was on his chin now, holding his mouth shut. Arm around his back and fingertips just stroking his throat and Xander twisted and choked and swallowed, shuddering. The fluid snaked down his throat and into his belly and he could feel it uncoiling there, like a knot of worms going free. Spike let his chin go and Xander worked his tongue through the dregs.

"What the - what the fuck - _God_ -"

"Oh, good, good kitty." Spike looked delighted. He pushed Xander over with a thump, following him down and getting one of Xander's thighs up over his shoulder, spreading Xander wide under him - crushing him small. "That was bloody marvelous, I could feel you -"

"Shut up, Spike." Xander couldn't seem to make his hands work - his arms. He lay like a ragdoll, watching Spike rock over him, the firelight flickering and dimming as if the fire were guttering out. "What'd you - what's it d-doing? What -"

"Just killing you, Xander, that's all. Just a poison Dru found. Bane and blackest magic to gut that bloody Baba Yaga's spell." 

Xander writhed mutely, the icy worms creeping out and out from his gut - invading every limb. Constricting around his spine and lungs and heart. He could hear his breathe wheezing in his throat - could feel his fingers and toes curling tight. When Spike's wrist, gashed with scarlet, was pressed to his mouth he couldn't fight - couldn't move. He felt Spike's fingers stroking again, over and over so that he swallowed. Spike's blood tasted like woodsmoke and honey.

"Just swallow it down, then. Just a little medicine to make you all better." Spike's eyes seemed to glow - grow - bright as the sun. Hammered gold slitted with black, and Xander felt himself falling into that black. Felt, distantly, Spike moving in him again, faster and harder. He tried to stop his gliding drop into that vast darkness but his fingers were numb and useless - his lungs breathless. "All better," Spike crooned softly, and Xander felt Spike's tongue at the corner of his mouth as Spike's wrist slipped away. "Spoonful of sugar soon, then you'll be right as rain."

_Rain, rain, go away...can you hear me, Spike?_

"I hear you. Shhh...go to sleep." Xander tried to shake his head but he couldn't feel himself anymore - couldn't see, couldn't hear. Sleep...seemed like the best thing, and he let it come. It was cold.

"Spike?"

"Yeah?"

Xander shifted a little, heat all along his right side, coolness along his left. "What's that...noise?" It was a thundery sort of sound - rushing, roaring, booming sort of noise. "Is it raining?"

Spike laughed softly and Xander slowly realized that Spike was lying beside him on a thick pallet of blankets and sleeping bags. That they were on the floor in front of the fire place, and the heat was the fire, chuffing and hissing and popping. It almost seemed to breathe, flares of color and heat passing over and over it as the air in the fireplace moved and rose and skeined out of the chimney.

"No, it's not raining. You're hearing _him_." Spike's fingers - chill and strong - touched Xander's chin and turned his head. There was a man lying on the couch, wrapped around in a length of rope. His naked skin was marked with bruises, his eyes wide and frantic above a gag, rolling white like a cornered dog.

"He's...gagged, I don't -"

" _Listen_ , Xander," Spike whispered, and Xander listened. 

_Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump._

_It's his heart. I can hear his heart beating...sounds like thunder, like…._

Knowledge sliding into place, slotting in with near-physical sensation. What he was, now - who he was. This new being... "What'd you do to me, Spike?"

"Don't you remember?" Spike asked, fingertips touching his throat. Touching skin that was swollen - raw. 

Xander hissed, jerking away, but behind the burn of contact came a furry, crawling warmth. Something soft and electric that made his skin shiver. He turned his face back to the fire and whined softly when Spike's mouth touched him. When Spike's tongue slipped gently over that same skin. Spike's hand was on his chest - Spike's thigh over his, and Xander rubbed his palm over the knob of Spike's knee, his other hand trapped against damp hardness.

"You remember," Spike said, the tip of his nose cool, pressing into Xander's cheek.

"You...there was.... Something I...drank. It...hurt," Xander whispered, shivering. Ghost of pain running through him, barb wire around his heart and fire in his bones. Smothering cold and the ache of a chest that wouldn't - _couldn't_ \- rise. Xander gasped in a sharp breath, reflex and memory and Spike laughed again.

"There, now. First breaths. Taste it, Xander. Let it tell you…."

Xander breathed in again so deeply it hurt, scent that was taste rolling over his tongue. The dark earthiness of the woodsmoke from the fire - the muddier scent of the coals and charred wood. Laundry soap and cedar from the blankets, the acrid smell of a cigarette and.... Spike. Earth, musk and citrus, tobacco and salt and iron. Sharper, higher stink of the man on the couch, the scent of his sweat savory-bright on Xander's tongue. Scent of….

"That's fear you're trying to eat," Spike breathed, his hand slipping down and down to rub slowly over Xander's belly. It felt hollow - utterly empty - under Spike's touch. " _His_ fear. Like a piece of good beef, isn't it? Like cake so dense with honey and egg you need a knife for it." Spike's teeth nipped at Xander's earlobe and Xander whimpered again, his eyes going shut for a moment and then snapping open as Spike's hand threaded slowly through Xander's pubic hair, tugging a little. "It's what the gods eat, that smell. When you put the sacrifice on the altar and blood it - burn it. That's what we send up to them on the smoke of it. That... _ambrosia_." 

There was a muffled, choking sound coming from the man. Words clogged behind the gag that Xander couldn't make out. Not really. Something like... _no_.

" _Yes_ ," Spike said, and fitted his mouth over the place on Xander's throat, sucking and scraping with needle teeth. Xander arched into him - into Spike's hand, into his mouth. Nails sinking into Spike's thigh and his trapped hand twisting and turning and _finding_. "Yeah, just like that..." Spike murmured, and a moment later he was hovering over Xander, knees straddling Xander's hips and the blanket slipping down off his shoulders. Skin like old ivory in the glow of the fire, and Xander could only stare at him. Track the smooth planes and curves over and over, eyes and fingers and finally his mouth.

Tasting Spike's flesh, cool and sour-sweet under his tongue. So, so rich - so perfect. Spiking the hunger that coiled and squirmed in his belly. 

_If you eat what the fairies offer, you forget.... This is like that...like the cake Alice ate and she changed.... Not human. Not earthly. Not...alive._

"Not dead, either." Spike's whole body swayed and then lay down onto Xander's, cool and heavy. Hard length of his cock pressing into the groove of Xander's hip - solid push of pectorals and ribs and thighs into Xander. He writhed there for a moment and Xander pushed helplessly back, every inch of his skin feeling as if there were static chasing over it - as if a hundred thousand fingers were stroking, pushing, plucking. His own cock was heavy against his belly, crushed between them. Aching in pulses with the throbbing of the heartbeat in Xander's ears.

" _God_ \- Spike - j-just -"

"Soon enough," Spike said, something like regret in his voice. He lifted himself away, kneeling over Xander, his fists beside Xander's shoulders. "Something you need, first."

"This, I need _this_." Xander wound his arms around Spike, grappling, and Spike laughed, letting Xander pull him down - roll him over. Xander felt the shaky just-woke-up weakness of his own limbs - _knew_ Spike was letting him win - letting him settle astride and above, hips grinding down and hands tight enough to bruise on Spike's shoulders.

"Do you? What do you think 'this' is?"

"It's...it's what...." Xander closed his eyes, breathing deep. Breathing in the thick, musk scent of Spike. The iron and salt smell that he knew was blood - the singing notes of citrus and burning that were magic, demon - 

_Maker. Creator...like Frankenstein - like...like that movie…._

"The rain in Spain...." Xander mumbled, finding his mouth pressed tight to Spike's throat, and Spike's laughter tickled against his lips - into his skull.

"You think I'm Henry Higgins? Made you over proper, I suppose...but I'm never that pompous ass." Spike eased his arms up around Xander - stroked down his back with fingers that still held human calluses and rough spots. Tingling rasp that Xander couldn't help arching into, his mouth open and panting in the scent of...

_Him, him, mine, he...he is...I need…._

"Call me Pygmalion, instead. Or Daedalus." Spike's mouth pressed, wet and sharp-edged, to Xander's jaw and Xander craned his chin aside, begging for...something. 

_Anything...please…._

"I'm Hephaestus, molding you...clay in my fingers...." Spike's hand was between them, guiding - pressing - and Xander went rigid as Spike's cock slid inside. 

Cold-burning push of flesh and he dropped his face to Spike's neck and _bit_ , hard. He didn't even notice when his mouth changed - when his useless human teeth honed under the pressure of his need and metamorphosed into something sleeker - deadlier. Taste across his gums - tongue - down his throat; pepper-hot, sulphur-tinged with magic. Dark and slick and -

_Good, good, better than...anything, God, Spike…._

"Learn fast, you do," Spike murmured, his hands smoothing - holding. Pulling Xander down into the up-thrust of Spike's hips - cradle of bone and muscle. 

Xander heard his voice keening, muffled by flesh and blood. He pulled away from Spike - leaned back onto bent legs and rode the rise and fall of Spike's body, his hands rubbing slow circles over Spike's chest. Gaze fixed on the bird-flutter jump of blood in the throat of the man on the couch. "Learn whatever you can teach me," he said, and Spike's fangs sank into Xander's wrist, and it was.... 

_Right. Meet, as they say. As who says? Fuck, do that again, do that…._

" _You_ don't say that. That's my word...fuck, Xander -" Spike arched up, chin going back and throat a taut, pale curve against the dark blankets and Xander let his eyes fall shut - let his body move. 

_This is...this is...the same, I'm the same, how am I...? Is this really me?_

"Of course it's you, Xander. Who else would you be?" Spike said, and Xander's body surrendered to the crackling fire that was racing up his spine - to Spike's cool, practiced hand on his cock. The room swung - reeled - and shredded away, and Xander went with it, willingly.

"So how do you feel about them now?" Spike was squinting into the wind, smoke furling out from his mouth and Xander shrugged - shifted his hands deeper into his pockets, watching the dazzle of headlights as they fractured through the prisms of rain.

"Sad, I guess," he said finally, and Spike stopped walking and turned to look at him.

" _Sad_? Why in fuck do you feel sad?"

Xander shrugged again - noticed Spike's glare of irritation and tried to organize his thoughts. The rich scents of the street were still - distracting him. "I can't go and see them or anything...it's just like it was before."

"What makes you think you can't go see them?" Spike shifted his irritation to the weather - reached out and grabbed Xander's jacket and towed him into the lee of an ugly brick building. "Smoke's too damp to bloody smoke," he muttered, tossing the cigarette into the gutter. He felt around for a new one.

Xander felt a flash of his own irritation and leaned there, damp-brick smells and alley smells and _bloodsmokesaltlife_. Two blocks away, the bass line throbbed out from a club and Xander could practically feel it in his bones. "Well, I'm a _vampire_ now, Spike. Thanks to you."

"Not quite so annoyingly immortal now, either. Thanks to me."

"Well, yeah. But - _evil_ , you know? Can't exactly pop up in front of Buffy and say 'hi'."

"Popping up in front of a Slayer's not a good idea now matter _who_ you are," Spike said. He inhaled sharply on his new cigarette, his eyes darting up and around at some noise in the building they were leaning on. Flashing cat's-eye gold in the street light, uncanny and beautiful. "And who says you can't?"

"Well - _she_ does, for one. Slayer's slay. And - I don't wanna hurt Buffy."

Spike snorted, flicking ash into the wind. Xander could actually _see_ it, and he watched the grey-white flakes tumble past and down, lost in the rain. "You wouldn't stand a chance against that one, mate. And what makes you think you'd fight?"

"You're doing this on purpose," Xander said, and Spike's eyebrow went up at him. "I'm a _vampire_ \- the thing that hates Slayers!"

"Do you hate Buffy?"

"Of _course_ -" Xander stopped. Thought about it for a long minute, chewing his lip a little and flexing his fists in his pockets. "Well...no. I don't." 

_I really don't. Even though that dancing-with-me-to-fuck-with-Angel thing still kinda burns my ass…._

"Thought so." Spike flicked the half-smoked butt of his cigarette away and strode out of the alley and Xander followed him. Two weeks of the whole vampire thing and he still wasn't sure, most of the time, _what_ he was thinking. Or feeling. 

_Feeling a **lot**. Too fucking much, it's…._ "It's crazy," he muttered and Spike slung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him off balance for a moment. 

"It's nothing you haven't felt before," Spike said, and Xander wondered how much of the frantic, stomach-clenching _fear_ got through to him. Spike was eerily good at picking up the random thoughts Xander thought the loudest; he seemed to be getting the quieter, more hidden stuff now, too.

"But I'm not _supposed_ to feel like this! Or - that, I mean."

"Not supposed to feel what?" 

"I'm not supposed to be all - worried about Buffy and Willow and Dawn. I'm not supposed to lie awake half the day feeling like I've disappointed Giles! 

_And I'm not supposed to be this...this fucking **normal**. It's...not normal._

"Is that what's got you in such a tizzy?" Spike laughed - stroked his hand over the back of Xander's neck and guided him up a set of five stairs to a broad, iron door. The music was even louder now and Xander took a couple of deep breathes, focusing on making it just a little...less. Turning it down, kind of, with an invisible knob. Something he just knew how to do. 

_The demon knows...but it's like when I was the soldier. It's just there, waiting for me…._

"Other way 'round, really," Spike said, banging hard on the door. "Everything you know's just waiting there for the demon to use."

"But I'm _me_."

"'Course you are," Spike sighed, his voice the tired parent's voice that's repeated the same thing over and over to a particularly stubborn - or dense - child. "You with a few extras. And one thing less."

"No soul," Xander muttered.

"Wrong," Spike said, and whapped Xander on the back of the head. A little door opened in the bigger door and a pair of red-glowing eyes looked out. " _Gy'nch_." The little door slammed shut and the sound of a lock working came through over the music.

Xander rubbed his head, glaring at Spike. "Well, I _don't_ have a soul. We didn't have Willow put it back in and I _know_ it was - was pushed out when you - did it." 

_I could feel it. It...hurt._

"When I killed you, you mean," Spike said, the irritation back, and Xander sighed and let himself be dragged into the club - across the dance floor and up a staircase and along a hall to a room. One wall was only hip-high, overlooking the seething mass of humanity that jumped and shimmied and twisted to the music. The other walls were covered in heavy, violet drapery that was spangled with a silvery mist, like someone had sprinkled diamond dust over them. Fat, honey-gold candles smoldered in iron brackets and stands.

Spike hung his coat up in a little niche - stared at Xander until he did the same. Then they both leaned on their elbows, watching the crowd. Lights skimmed and flashed, dazzling Xander when they flicked in his direction and he concentrated on keeping his eyes down a little so he wouldn't be blinded.

"Okay, yeah, when you killed me. No soul."

"Again - you're wrong. You have a soul, Xander. Just not working quite right, is it?" Spike flashed a grin at him, all ivory and brass-gold eyes dancing with mockery and Xander felt the surge of reaction go all through him - clamped down on it.

"Giles said -"

"Giles never got turned into a vamp. Your soul's still there. You just lost the collar it was born with. Slipped it, easy as a canny dog."

"Then how come I don't wanna kill Buffy?" Xander saw a shock of pale-claret hair that strobed blue and green and acid-white in the shifting lights. Long limbs encased in slick black PVC - heeled boots and a smear of black under the eyes - across the lips. 

Spike followed Xander's stare and considered for a moment, then nodded. "Because she's your _friend_ , you git! Look - you're _still you_. Still the same pathetic loser that tried to ride the Slayer's coat-tails to glory -"

"Hey! I stopped an apocalypse or two!"

"Who hasn't?" Spike scoffed. He pointed toward the dance floor, nodding again - stepped away from the wall and over to the bar, cracking open a fresh bottle of whiskey. Something old and Irish and undrinkable, as far as Xander was concerned. "Point is - everything you've done, and been, and seen - it's all still there, Xander. All still...affecting you." Spike drank the shot down with a sharp motion of his wrist and then stood there, turning the crystal glass in his fingers. Water had pearled in his hair, glimmering in the floor lights. Sparkling along still-damp cheekbones and the nails of his hands. Everything about him was...beyond human. Xander wondered if he looked half as good.

"The demon - it settled into the grooves of your brain. Curled around your spine and wormed into your rib cage...." Spike poured out another drink and cocked his head, listening. "It formed itself to you - you're the mold, Xander. You're the sand, and it's the wax. And nothing's changed. Except...." Spike put the glass down and crossed back to Xander - took his face gently in his palms. 

Xander stood there, looking at Spike - at the kaleidoscope sheen of his eyes. The shifting, restless lights played over skin and hair, making them both glow with a pale, nacre gloss. "Except what?"

"Except you're fucking gorgeous now, Xander. Just...beautiful." Spike tasted like whiskey and lemon and earth and Xander rested his hands lightly on Spike's jean-clad hips. "And you know what's important, now. And what's...dross."

"Buffy's not dross," Xander whispered. "Willow isn't -"

"No, they're not...." Slow brush of Spike's lips over Xander's and Xander shuddered - pressed closer, Spike's thigh sliding between his. His skin felt - too small. Tingling and tight and so fucking sensitive that his soft cotton shirt rasped across his shoulders. "They're - fires, Xander. Burning brands that you want to touch. Heat and light that you need so fucking bad you'd burn yourself on them again and again...."

"Don't - wanna burn," Xander said, biting gently into the curve of Spike's jaw - tasting his skin with little, darting laps of his tongue. "I just...just wanna...."

"Feel the heat, right? Be blinded, for just a moment.... Dance the dance, body to body...." Spike swayed and Xander swayed with him, mouth to mouth and Spike's fingers threading up through Xander's hair, tugging and stroking.

"Never thought it'd be like...this," Xander murmured a few minutes later, forehead to forehead with Spike, eyes closed. "I thought I'd just be a...monster. Just hate - everything."

"The world's too bloody marvelous to hate," Spike said, and then the door opened and a narrow-faced demon - all angles and dull-grey skin - ushered two people in. The boy Xander had watched earlier, his hair an ashy plum in the candlelight. He was all muscle and bone under the PVC, straps and buckles and silver highlighting the line of thigh and rib.

The other was taller and dark, skin-tight jeans and glo-light bracelets and the chiseled, perfect profile of an Egyptian god. The grey demon bowed and shut the door and the boys looked around, wide-eyed.

"Wow - hey - this is _cool_. This a private party?" Egypt looked Spike over, hip-shot and grinning. The other slinked sideways until he was leaning against the half wall, looking up at Xander through impossibly long eyelashes.

"Some kind of party...." PVC-boy said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. "What's your name?"

"Xander." Spike's fingers slipped away and he headed for the bar, gathering up the other boy on his way, arm curling possessively around his waist. 

"You can call me Five," the other said, half-smile on his black lips and Xander smiled back. 

Later, when Xander found the bass-heavy thump of Five's heart under his lips, he bit almost delicately, sipping slowly while the whipcord body writhed over him, pale as Spike under all that black vinyl. Five tasted like wintergreen and cardamom - salt and the sick-sharp bite of Ecstasy. 

_Dross. Some things are just dross,_ Xander thought. _And some things are like the sun in the sky. Just have to keep from being burned._

"Don't get burned," Spike said, his tiger-citrine eyes staring from above the arched and trembling back of the Egyptian. One hand digging into the earth-brown hip, the other reaching out - coaxing Xander's own hand up from a sweat-slick back to catch and hold and tangle, cool flesh like water - bones and tendons flexing and curling around.

_No - won't get burned. Just...warm, that's all. Just steal a little heat against the night._

**Author's Note:**

> Xander abuses alcohol. As the result of a spell, Xander attempts self-harm that verge on suicidal.  
> Spike uses and abuses drugs, and there are a couple fairly detailed scenes of heroin use. Spike intentionally doesn't eat, and has a moment of OOC racism. Fairly hopeless for a bit, and pretty angsty/unhappy, until the end.


End file.
